We are collecting personal emails for informational broadcasts , please send to main email Ibew2324@verizon.net. Please provide us with who the email belongs to. 

SGT Peter Rooney

Worthington, MA

Army Sgt. Peter Rooney lost both legs above the knee when the vehicle he was riding in hit a roadside bomb on April 16, 2007 in Ramadi, Iraq.

Rooney joined the Army in 2001, just after his 18th birthday. He met his wife Susanne while stationed in Germany.

We will be building a specially adapted home in western MA to specifically address the day to day challenges he now faces and to provide him with utmost independence in the place he will soon call home!

We're in need of volunteers from the building trades as well as supporters from the community.

Please consider donating supplies or labor or making a monetary donation!

 Please call the the Union Hall if

President- Marty Feid

Vice President- Joseph Floyd

Recording Secretary-Ann Bonneville

Treasurer-Kathy Collins

Business Manager/Financial Secretary - John Rowley

Unit 1 Springfield-Matt MacDonnell

Unit 2 Pittsfield-Don Wasuk

Unit 3 Northampton-Jesse Kovalsick

Unit 4 North Adams/Gt Barrington -Todd Lincoln

Unit 5 Holyoke/Westfield - Stephen Booher

Plant at Large-Joe O'Brien

Avaya at Large-Paul Danielczuk

Traffic at Large-Chris Casino

It's time to Stand Up for Respect

Submitted by Website Editor on Wed, 03/11/2009 - 4:27pm. A message to all IBEW members at Verizon from Myles Calvey   Verizon's Code of Business Conduct says, "We know it is critical that we respect everyone at every level of our business. We champion diversity, embrace individuality and listen carefully when others speak." But have you noticed how management is mistreating employees? Have you experienced the push for increased productivity ahead of quality and safety? Have you seen your brothers and sisters unfairly singled out for discipline? Have you watched as management violated hard-won provisions in our union contract?  When you put it all together, management is showing a complete lack of RESPECT for each employee and for our union. And equally important, the company is showing a similar lack of respect for our customers. Verizon should take a page from its own book and start giving employees and customers the respect we all deserve. The two go hand in hand. Respect for the employee and respect for the customer. A company that stops respecting its employees and customers is a company in trouble. In Verizon's case, I believe it comes from top management's drive to maximize profits ahead of all other considerations.  When companies do that, it's called "corporate greed." Of course greed is hardly unique to Verizon. It has infected nearly every business. And clearly now the whole country is suffering because for so many years our government stood by and did nothing about it.   » print Printer friendly version

Representatives of the Work & Family Committee will be visiting some work locations with book offerings, for other locations please call the hall for information.

Self Help Books and DVDs

• Parents on Board
• The College Solutions
• Active Parenting for Step Families
• Cooperative Parenting and Divorce
• I've got this Friend
• Complete Elder Care Planner
• Behind the wheel DVD
• Cyber Safe Kids/Cyber Savvy Teens

Verizon's annual meeting for shareholders will be held in Louisville, KY on May 7, 2009.  Proxies should be arriving in the mail or by e-mail shortly.  Once again, the IBEW will be collecting completed proxies to deliver to Verizon's top management.

CWA & IBEW will be collecting and delivering voted proxies to the company. CWA & IBEW are not asking for discretionary authority to vote proxies on behalf of their members. Please make sure you vote and sign your proxy.

For IBEW's Voting Recommendations Please Click Here

Please SIGN YOUR PROXY and return in the Provided Envelope directly to your steward or union representative by Thursday, April 30, 2009.  Thank You

 The ballots for the election of officers of IBEW Local 2324 are in the process of being mailed , if you have not received one by May 15th  please call the election judge Jason Varona 413 627-3777. The deadline to call for a replacement ballot will be May 27th.

When your pay, benefits, or your job is in jeopardy there is little satisfacation in saying :" We told you so!"

Carl Russ one of our newly organized VZ Business Technician sworn in by Business Manager John Rowley

The Credit Union has established a Rainy Day Acct.(readiness account). It is a weekly direct deposit fund into an acct with upto 3 year term . It will carry the interest rate of a 6 month CD. The rate will be variable.Call or visit your local Freedom Credit Union for more details and to start saving for 2011. 

  IBEW FIGHT BACK

by James Parks, Mar 5, 2009

Vice President Joe Biden met with the AFL-CIO Executive Council today in Miami, where he reiterated the administration’s support for the Employee Free Choice Act, saying, “If a union is what you want, a union you’re entitled to have.”

Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Council today that returning our economy to health means restoring the basic right to join a union and bargain collectively. And the way to do that is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

He quoted President Obama saying: ‘”I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment.”

If you’ve got workers who have a decent pay and benefits, they also are customers for your business. So let me add to that and say that I have a simple, basic belief, one that we’re going to work hard to put into action:  If a union is what you want, a union you’re entitled to have.

The vice president quoted AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s recent remarks in his column expressing basic truths that should guide the AFL-CIO in 2009:

We can’t fix the economy by hurting workers. Rescuing the economy will require investments in jobs, infrastructure, health care. When you’re in a deep hole, you need a long ladder. Rebuilding our broken economy gives us the opportunity to get it right and reward workers. Progressive, pro-family, pro-worker candidates won. So isn’t it time that we have progressive, pro-worker, pro-family priorities that win, too?

Click here to read the entire Sweeney column.

Biden, who heads the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, told the council the Obama administration is dedicated to rebuilding the nation’s middle class.

You can’t have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. We will judge the success or failure of our administration at the end of our four years, based on whether or not the standard of living of the middle class has increased or not. That’s the bottom-line measure. And guess what. Neither one of us believes it can get better without you getting stronger.

The people Teddy Roosevelt used to call the “doers of deeds”—the people who teach our children, protect our neighborhoods, protect our homes. The people who staff our hospitals, who work on the line—on the lines that a few are working on these days. The people who are our nation’s heart and soul, and I would add, our nation’s spine. They are the spine of the nation. 

For too long, Biden said, we’ve failed to have a White House that puts families front and center in our economic policies. That’s why the Obama economic recovery program focuses on jobs, he said, and the administration is pushing for real health care reform. He also said the Obama-Biden team would never have won without the support of working families.

Biden’s visit to the Executive Council follows a two-day visit from Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who participated in a town hall forum on Sunday and met with the union leaders Monday.

ROBERT B. REICH

BERKELEY, Calif.

WHY IS THIS recession so deep, and what can be done to reverse it?