Cablevision, CWA Still Spar Over Disputed Service, Worker Treatment, Despite Cablevision’s Defamation Lawsuit
The Communications Workers of America slammed Cablevision in a report released Thursday, which coincided with a gathering of union leaders and New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and New York City Council Member Letitia James, each of whom offered statements questioning the service of the company. The report accused Cablevision of, as its title says, “leaving Brooklyn behind” in terms of the Internet speeds provided, the facilities and the way the cable company treats the workers who chose to unionize early last year. Cablevision dismissed the report as “phony” and has strongly disputed the union’s claims before, suing the union for defamation in late December.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The CWA report comprised 26 slides detailing much dissatisfaction with Cablevision’s Brooklyn service and treatment of workers (http://xrl.us/bn83i6). The union said it randomly surveyed 700 people leaving Brooklyn subway stations and claiming to find several details that would violate Cablevision’s franchise agreement, it said, describing more than a third of respondents who said the company was late to service appointments, a quarter who said it took more than seven days for service installation, a third who experienced improper billing charges and 23 percent who rated the service as “poor” and another 38 percent who rated it “fair.” The survey found 88 percent of respondents reported costs “too high for the services they were receiving,” one slide said.
The report and event come little more than a week after Cablevision sued CWA and two individual union members in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the state’s highest civil trial court, for defamation (CD Dec 28 p6 OR WID Dec 28 p4). The cable company disputes the idea that there’s any difference in Internet speeds between Brooklyn and the rest of New York as well as questions the assertion that it misbehaved in how it offered refunds to Superstorm Sandy victims, as the union has asserted. CWA called 50,000 people after the storm alerting people to Cablevision’s refund policy, which wasn’t automatic and required calling into the company, and found “6,500 of them were unaware of this policy and pressed one to connect with Cablevision to cancel their service for the month,” the report said.
Union organizers called the lawsuit “frivolous” in a release Thursday. “The suit’s baseless claims are a despicable misuse of the court system in attempt to silence workers’ rights,” said Local 1109 Executive Vice President Chris Calabrese in a statement. Calabrese is one of the two union officials named in the complaint.
"This phony report is just another example of the CWA union making false and defamatory statements about Cablevision, and attempting to mislead the public through deceptive and illegal tactics, which is why we are suing them,” Cablevision responded in a statement. “Given Cablevision’s long history of local investments and job creation in Brooklyn and across the tri-state region, it is unfortunate that public officials would involve themselves in the CWA union’s obvious and desperate campaign against our company.” The unionized workers represent a small fraction of Cablevision’s employees, according to the company.
The report also slammed what it calls Cablevision’s “faulty equipment” and showed photos of low-hanging wires as well as “risks of stray voltage” and “fire hazards.” CWA said this comprises “a small sample of hundreds of Cablevision equipment problems facing Brooklyn residents.”