Blog

CWA District 2-13 Rallies for Children

Led by CWA District 2-13’s Human Rights and Women’s Committee Representative and Local 2336 President Melissa Smith-Kupihea, Locals are encouraged to participate in the “No Child Gets Left Behind” initiative. Members are being asked to donate travel luggage to shelters, foster care agencies, and transitional homes within the District so that children in need are able to move their belongings with dignity. Many children are forced to resort to black trash bags for transport.

The initiative will run through July 5, 2026.

For more information on this initiative, please email President Smith-Kupihea.

Last month, POLITICO management, after months of negotiations between our members at the Washington-Baltimore News Guild (TNG-CWA Local 32035), agreed to shut down two artificial intelligence “tools” that spread misinformation. Our members at POLITICO and E&E News announced in December of 2025 a landmark win in their arbitration case against POLITICO over the company’s unilateral introduction of artificial intelligence tools that bypassed negotiated safeguards and undermined core journalistic standards.

The company will shut down Capitol AI Report-Builder, a tool that produced branded policy reports for POLITICO Pro subscribers without any editorial review, despite generating glaring factual errors. It also will not revive the “Live Summaries” AI feature, which generated error-riddled unedited coverage of major political events, including the 2024 Democratic National Convention and Vice Presidential Debate. Both uses were found by an arbitrator in November 2025 to have violated POLITICO and E&E News members’ collective bargaining agreement.

“This is an extraordinary win not just for our members, but for everyone who believes journalism must remain in human hands,” said Ariel Wittenberg, the unit chair. “We refused to back down, and POLITICO heard us loud and clear that these tools do not belong in our newsroom.”

The arbitration case was one of the first major labor rulings in the United States to address the impact of AI on journalists’ work and sets a major precedent for the future of journalism in the age of artificial intelligence.

Click here to read more about this landmark case.

Last month, Flight Attendants represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) won a political victory with the signing of legislation to expand paid sick leave to all Virginia workers. AFA-CWA members joined allies including the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA); the Virginia AFL-CIO; and NoVA Labor, the Northern Virginia AFL-CIO representing 72 local unions and over 56,000 workers.

The new program has a phased implementation based on employer size, ensuring that all Virginians have the basic protection of paid sick days. Members of United AFA-CWA Council 21 (AFA-CWA Local 22021) lobbied at the Virginia Capitol building, fighting airline executives’ attempts to exclude airline industry workers from the program.

“Our union has long fought to make sure Flight Attendants are included in paid and unpaid leave policies,” reads a statement from the AFA-CWA. “State by state, airlines attempt to exclude us, but we continue to fight to make sure Flight Attendants have access to the same benefits as any other workers. In Minnesota, we’ve beaten back airlines’ attempts to exclude airline workers from the state’s earned sick and safe time law, with our own Kaela Berg leading the fight in the State House.”

Congratulations to all the AFA-CWA activists who fought for, and won, paid sick leave for all Virginia workers!

After nearly three years of waiting, members of West Virginia Troopers-CWA Local 2019 finally saw justice served after their union brother, West Virginia State Trooper Cory Maynard, was killed in the line of duty. The suspect in the crime, Timothy Kennedy, fled the scene and was later captured after a six-hour manhunt.

Kennedy was charged with several felonies, including first-degree murder. After a three-week trial, on May 18, 2026, Kennedy was found guilty on all counts and the jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing is scheduled for July 2.

Fellow Trooper and CWA Local 2019 President, Sgt. L.A. Faircloth, wrote in a statement, “Sgt. Maynard was a dedicated member of the State Police for over 15 years, serving West Virginia communities with honor, courage, and compassion. Sgt. Maynard was also a husband, a father, and a brother in green.”

CWA members will continue to honor the memory and sacrifice of Sgt. Maynard.

Last month, Meta sent shockwaves through the tech industry, performing a round of mass layoffs that eliminated approximately 8,000 jobs. This move prompted the elected Executive Board of the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA Local 9009) to release a statement calling on tech workers to get organized.

“It might feel like we are powerless in the face of these overwhelming market forces, but as the tech workers who power these companies, we are the people best positioned to do something about it,” reads the statement. “The products generating massive profits for companies like Meta and Google don’t exist without our labor. That’s why we say to Googlers and tech workers across the industry: Don’t mourn, organize!”

Meta’s mass layoffs occurred during Google I/O, a flashy annual event during which Alphabet unveils new products. At the Google I/O Demo Day for employees in Mountain View, Calif., AWU-CWA members armed with clipboards walked the lines of workers waiting to get into the event, educating coworkers about the Googlers for Job Security campaign demands and gathering new petition signatures. As AWU-CWA member Ezra Wu said, “We need security to be creative, and creativity is what powers all the cool stuff that happens at I/O.”

To stay up to date on AWU-CWA’s Googlers for Job Security campaign and future calls to action, follow them on Instagram, X, Facebook, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.