Verizon Strike: As Billions Roll In, Workers Walk Out
by Mischa Gaus
Labor Notes
August 8, 2011

http://labornotes.org/print/2011/08/verizons-millions-roll-workers-walk-out

At Verizon locations throughout the Northeast, 45,000
workers started walking picket lines Sunday.

Their strike, brought on by a flood of concession
demands the Communications Workers say will pick
$20,000 from each worker's pocket, is the largest the
country has seen in four years.

Verizon, which has made $19 billion in profits in the
last four years, announced July 29 its wireless unit
would pay a special $10 billion dividend to
shareholders. At the same time, its negotiators were
pushing for $1 billion in concessions from workers.

"We're on strike for our bargaining rights, just like
Wisconsin or Ohio," CWA President Larry Cohen told
members on a union-wide conference call Sunday. "We can
never end this recession by cutting the wages of
workers."

The company proposed to eliminate pension accruals and
defined benefits for new hires. Its bargainers want to
eliminate job security, and shift the cost of health
care to workers.

They demanded to replace regular raises with
management-determined productivity measures. They want
the right to shift more work away from union members
and out of the country. They looked to axe paid sick
days and take away Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and
Veteran's Day as paid holidays. They wanted to fight
items as small as a $3 parking reimbursement.

A hundred concession proposals still sat on the
bargaining table shared by the CWA and Electrical
Workers (IBEW) as the contract expired Saturday night.

The strike appeared to surprise some, on both the union
and management side. One pair of managers rushed into
the field "fixed" a shorn phone line with duct tape.

Patti Egan-Walters, a business agent for CWA Local 1005
in New York, said another manager confided that he had
been dispatched to drive around the city in a Verizon
truck-but without any training in how to fix or install
anything.

His orders? "When you run out of gas, come on back."

Negotiations in 2003 and 2008 ran through contract
expirations. The company flew in a replacement
workforce and housed them, but when the unions stayed
inside, the cost of keeping a scab workforce idle
quickly escalated, prompting a settlement. This time,
members say the company's demands are so severe, the
unions had little choice but to walk out.

"They want to take 60 percent of the contract and dump
it," said Ed Fitzpatrick, president of IBEW Local 2222
in Massachusetts. "These boys are making billions and
all they want is cheap labor."

Tashauna Jackson, a CWA Local 1105 steward, noted that
the chairman of Verizon's board took home $55,000 a day
last year-and that in four years, the company's top
four executives bagged $258 million between them.

Yet Verizon says union members must suffer to bring
labor costs into line with non-union competitors,
prompting members to point out that the union would
rather lift cable and wireless workers up to their
standards. "We're not going the way of Wal-Mart," said
John Colleran, a Local 2222 steward.

Verizon signed a neutrality agreement as part of the
settlement ending the 18-day strike in 2000. It
promised to allow the unions to organize its wireless
workforce-but the company violated the agreement as
soon as the ink was dry, fighting viciously against
every organizing drive. Today, only 50 Verizon wireless
workers have a union.

MOBILE PICKETS

At the Manhattan headquarters Monday, passing cars and
trucks honked in support of picketers, to loud cheers
and whistles. Workers chanted and booed as managers
entered and left office doors just feet away.

Two cops stood watch under the Verizon sign, while
others directed anyone wearing a red shirt into the
area enclosed by metal barricades. In Albany, a tight
group of picketers blocked doors until police forced
them to let managers through. One injury was reported
in Monday's picketing.

Thirty managers in Manhattan, some with suitcases,
entered the building at 7 a.m. Later a group of seven
managers in workboots with backpacks (presumably filled
with tools) were seen leaving. A dozen picketers
followed them into the subway. "Are you kidding, you're
going to follow me?" said one manager to a striker.

Workers from the headquarters office travel on foot to
do installation and repair in lower Manhattan. The
pickets would follow struck work throughout the day,
said Local 1101 steward Ron Spaulding, making life as
difficult as possible for scabs.

The "mobile picketing" strategy, honed in a four-month
strike in 1989, is underway in Massachusetts, too.
Techs track the vehicles leaving garages and send out
the call. "We can get 50 people in a heartbeat,"
Colleran said, surrounding a manhole or scab truck in
the field.

Members have noticed that many safety precautions have
fallen away in Verizon's rush to get managers into the
field, and mentioned their concerns to OSHA.

Strikers said Verizon's attacks would spread to other
unions, and push down non-union workers even further.

Union members don't pay health care premiums at
Verizon, a plum they have defended through previous
strikes-and one which is increasingly hard to defend,
because President Obama's 2010 health care reform will
levy a tax on their so-called "Cadillac" plans.

"We fought for those benefits for all those years,"
said Brian Tyrrell, a special services technician in
Manhattan, recalling the sacrifices of past strikes,
including the 219-day strike in 1972.

Although the tax won't be levied until 2018, thanks to
union lobbying, Verizon is demanding that union members
start paying thousands of dollars now.

Some leaders, like CWA Local 1400 President Don
Trementozzi, argue that the unions should instead push
the companies to back single-payer health care plans in
East Coast states, which would take the issue off the
bargaining table-and off the company's back-without
decimating workers' paychecks or coverage.

OFF THE PICKET LINE

Both CWA and IBEW leaders are clear that traditional
strike tactics won't win this walkout-and that they're
not going to play by the usual rules.

Rebutting Verizon's claims, they say the company has
canceled bargaining sessions, and that they are
prepared to talk.

Cohen has said the union seeks not a contract
settlement but simply to stimulate serious bargaining
with its strike.

This leaves open the possibility that the unions could
submit an unconditional offer to return to work, coming
back inside to restart talks-and holding open the
possibility of walking back out if Verizon's bargaining
stance doesn't improve.

Alternately, Verizon could lock out the workers,
triggering their access to unemployment insurance and
preparing the grounds for the union to file unfair
labor practices over its bad-faith bargaining position.
(Leaning on state benefits would take some of the
pressure off the CWA's $400 million strike fund, too,
and help the IBEW-which has no fund-stay in the game.)

"It's possible to carry out a guerrilla strike
campaign-though there are some risks," says Boston
labor law attorney Bob Schwartz, author of Strikes,
Picketing, and Inside Campaigns. The company could
discharge strikers if it convinces the National Labor
Relations Board that the union is engaging in pre-
meditated intermittent strikes.

But the unions are in uncharted territory, he said.

He pointed out that the unions maintain their right to
shut down all parts of their employer's business and
apply pressure to its suppliers-which both unions are
pursuing aggressively. Pickets at Verizon wireless
stores are turning away customers and denying the
company revenue at its most profitable source.

On Sunday's call with members, CWA District 1 Vice
President Chris Shelton promised more.

"We're going to use some tactics we're not used to," he
said. "But we have to, because the old tactics don't
work anymore."

Jenny Brown contributed to this piece.

____________________________________________

PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

PS Labor Archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate