Verizon strikers take on corporate giant
By
Kathy Durkin
Published Aug 10, 2011 6:41 PM
Verizon strikers in Philadelphia.
WW photo: Joseph Piette
|
15,000 Verizon workers mass in New York pre-strike rally on July 30.
Photo: CWA
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In the largest U.S. strike in four years, 45,000 union members took to the
picket lines from Massachusetts to Virginia on Aug. 7 after their contract with
Verizon Communications expired. The courageous strikers, who belong to the
Communication Workers union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, refuse to go back to work until they have a decent contract.
Ninety-one percent of the 35,000 CWA members and a vast majority of the 10,000
IBEW members voted to strike in late July. They took this action after Verizon
refused to back down on nearly 100 concessions it has been demanding from its
workforce since June 22, when bargaining began.
The CWA website explains, “CWA and IBEW have decided to take the
unprecedented step of striking until Verizon stops its Wisconsin-style tactics
and starts bargaining seriously,” referring to how Wisconsin officials
pushed through union-busting, anti-worker laws.
“Even at the 11th hour as contracts were set to expire, Verizon continues
to seek to strip away 50 years of collective bargaining gains. Following the
game plan of Wisconsin, Verizon is trying to destroy the collective bargaining
process by refusing to engage seriously on the issues,” said Candice
Johnson, CWA communications director.
IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill stressed, “[Verizon] turned
their backs on any attempts to reach a reasonable settlement. We cannot stand
by while one of the richest, most successful corporations in the world joins
the race to decimate the ‘middle class’ of this country.” He
continued, “[A]t this point, we had no choice.”
Verizon officials insist on demands that would devastate the workers’
standard of living, eliminate hard-won benefits and override their union
rights. They seek to end all job security provisions, eliminate disability
benefits for employees injured at work and take away paid holidays, such as
Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Sick days would be limited to five a year for
current employees and would end for new hires. Regular raises would be
eliminated. Pensions would be frozen for current workers and nonexistent for
future employees.
Due to past militant struggles, the workers don’t pay health care
premiums. The company’s aim is to institute a health plan that would cost
the workers and retirees thousands of dollars — despite earlier
contractual guarantees made to them. The company also maintains its insistence
on outsourcing work to low-wage, non-union contractors here and abroad.
Verizon demands $20K in concessions per worker
Verizon has not moved one iota from its intransigent stance and has cancelled
all negotiating sessions since midnight on Aug. 6 when the contract
expired.
The company’s demands amount to $1 billion per year in concessions, which
is $20,000 per worker.
The company is promoting the spin, as Hill points out, “that it needs to
make itself competitive in the changing telecommunications industry.” In
other words, the workers must make huge concessions so that Verizon’s
labor costs equal those of non-union workers in the company and in the
industry. This is a convenient cover for the corporation’s
mega-profit-making and exploitation of its workers — whose labor has
created all of Verizon’s wealth.
The strikers are in the unionized landline division of Verizon’s
workforce, and they have lost one-half of their members in the last 10 years.
The workers in the other main division — Verizon Wireless — are not
unionized, except for 70 New York City CWA wireless technicians, who are also
on strike. Most of the wireless employees have no union because the company
fiercely fought every one of their organizing drives, in violation of a
“neutrality” agreement signed with the unions in 2000.
While demanding these drastic cutbacks, Verizon had revenue of more than $100
billion in the last year and is making record profits — $20 billion over
the last four years and more than $6.9 billion in the first half of 2011. The
company paid its top five executives $258 million in the same period. Its
chairperson, Ivan Seidenberg, received 300 times the average salary earned by
workers.
Labor movement needs to get behind this strike
This strike is a spark that could embolden the working class and the labor
movement at a time when the capitalist class is on a rampage to push back
workers’ gains — trying to take back everything that unionized
workers have won — and to decimate their collective bargaining
rights.
The ferocity with which Verizon is attacking the workers must be met by a
mobilization of the labor movement. This strike is crucial in the unfolding
class struggle, one that critically needs the active support of the entire
labor movement — in both the public and private sectors.
CWA and IBEW members have vowed to stand up to this vast global monolith and
fight back against an assault on their rights, as their public sector union
brothers and sisters did in Wisconsin.
It would bolster this strike if public sector workers — who are under
attack by reactionary anti-union forces — came out to support the Verizon
workers.
In the current atmosphere of outright corporate hostility to labor, when the
super-rich corporate owners and their governmental representatives have
unleashed a war on public and private sector workers and their unions, unity
among all workers in all industries and unions is critically needed.
The Verizon strikers are bravely standing up for all workers. Their principled
actions and working-class solidarity are borne out by IBEW President Hill, who
asserted, “This group of Verizon workers is prepared to make the
strongest possible stand not just for their own contract but for workers
everywhere by saying NO to the race to the bottom.”
Repair technicians, FIOS installers and call center workers are picketing
throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. They are walking picket
lines and rallying at more than 100 Verizon locations in the New York/New
Jersey area. Workers World newspaper encourages its readers and all those in
the progressive movement to support the strike and join the picket lines. For
locations, see cwa-union.org and ibew.org.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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