Larry Cohen

Larry Cohen was elected president of the Communications Workers of America by acclamation on Aug. 29, 2005. In his first term as CWA president, Cohen has put in place sweeping reforms and improvements. He transformed the budgeting system of the union, giving districts and sectors greater flexibility while establishing clear accountability. The new budgeting process requires that all spending be tied to incoming resources. Cohen also won approval of convention delegates for a new, innovative strategy that will enable the union to carry out large-scale, strategic campaigns, targeting corporations and taking on such key policy initiatives as health care reform. CWA’s Strategic Industry Funds put the union’s resources to work by developing new strategies and tactics, apart from the bargaining process. Also under Cohen’s leadership, convention delegates approved a measure to add the voices of local union leaders to the union’s executive board, to broaden diversity of board membership and to expand the important perspective of local leaders to the union’s leadership. He is recognized as one of the most visionary and effective leaders in the labor movement. He has built a highly respected and successful organizing program within CWA and has developed new strategies to help workers gain union representation in a broad range of sectors, including high-tech, public employment, customer service and more. Cohen also is the labor movement’s leading proponent of building workplace democracy and restoring bargaining rights to rebuild the country’s middle class. He has expanded CWA’s membership mobilization program to create a network of union stewards and activists who advance workers’ interests, a model embraced by the AFL-CIO and other unions. He is the leading voice in focusing attention on the crisis in collective bargaining in the United States and the need for real reform and is the labor movement’s fiercest advocate of the Employee Free Choice Act. He chairs the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee Throughout his career, Cohen has chaired major contract negotiations in both the public and private sectors, at employers including Verizon and AT&T, and Cingular Wireless, now AT&T Mobility. Cohen was one of the first to recognize changes in telecommunications through the convergence of video, voice and data technologies, and the need to unify unionized workers in these sectors. He also has worked to expand CWA – the union now represents workers in information technology and communications; print and broadcast media and publishing; health care, education and public workers; manufacturing and the airline industry. A native of Philadelphia, Cohen became active in the union as a state worker in New Jersey, where he led a successful organizing drive which eventually brought 36,000 state workers into the union. In 1980, he was appointed a staff representative. He was promoted in 1982 to New Jersey area director and again in 1985 to assistant to the CWA vice president for District 1. In 1986 he was called on to serve as assistant to the CWA president and director of organizing, a position he held until his election as executive vice president in August 1998.