Communications Workers of America
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| Communications Workers of America | |
| Founded | 1949 |
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| Members | 700,000+ (2006) |
| Country | United States, Canada |
| Affiliation | AFL-CIO, CLC |
| Key people | Larry Cohen, president |
| Office location | Washington, D.C. |
| Website | www.cwa-union.org |
Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States (the union also has locals in Canada), representing over 700,000 workers in both the private and public sectors. CWA is headquartered in Washington, DC and affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labour Congress, and Union Network International. The current president is Larry Cohen, a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
CWA's roots lie in the organizing of telephone workers into the National Federation of Telephone Workers, founded in 1938. After losing a strike with AT&T in 1947, the federation reorganized as CWA, a truly national union, which affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1949.In 1994 the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians merged with the CWA and became The Broadcasting and Cable Television Workers Sector of the CWA, NABET-CWA. Since 1997, it includes The Newspaper Guild, and since 2000 it includes Human Rights Watch's support staff. In 2004, the Association of Flight Attendants merged with CWA, and became formally known as the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, or AFA-CWA.
