Since 2005, he has been vice president of CWA District 1, representing 160,000 members in more than 300 CWA locals in New Jersey, New York and New England.  (*)

Prior to his election as vice president, Shelton was assistant to the District 1 vice president, responsible for contract negotiations and the thousands of collective bargaining agreements covering District One members. (*)

He served as the Verizon Regional Bargaining Chair in 2000 and 2003, and overall Chair of Verizon bargaining for CWA District 1, District 2-13, IBEW New Jersey and New England in 2008 and 2011.  He also chaired negotiations in New Jersey for 40,000 State Workers in 2008 and 2011.(*)

Shelton started his union career when he went to work for New York Telephone in 1968 as an outside technician.  He was elected a CWA Local 1101 shop steward in 1968 and served Local 1101 in various positions until December 1988 when he joined the CWA national staff.(*)

He is a native of the Bronx, N.Y.

Most recently, she has been serving as secretary-treasurer of the NewsGuild-CWA, the CWA affiliate representing journalists and other news workers. As secretary-treasurer, she has been responsible for managing the Guild’s operating budget, its investments and other funds. She assists locals with fiscal and legal compliance and also serves on the NewsGuild’s collective bargaining and legal services committees.(*)

A native of Minnesota, she has a journalism degree from Evergreen State College in Seattle, and beginning in 1999 worked as a reporter for nine years at the Contra Costa (California) Times. There, she successfully led her co-workers at the Times and other newspapers in the Bay Area to organize and join the Northern California Media Workers Guild, now called the Pacific Media Workers Guild.(*)

She and 28 co-workers were fired by the Bay Area Newspaper Group in 2008 for their union activism but she continued to work with the NewsGuild and CWA, ultimately bargaining a first contract for workers at the newspaper group.

The Telecommunications and Technologies sector represents members at ADT, AT&T (Legacy T), Avaya, CenturyLink, Frontier, Nokia, OFS (Atlanta & Sturbridge), and Windstream.