Verizon Strike & Wisconsin Lessons


Verizon stops health care payments, struggles to
maintain service as support for strikers grows

August 17, 2011 

by William Rogers

http://leftlaborreporter.wordpress.com

Verizon earlier this week notified its 45,000 striking
workers represented by CWA and IBEW that the company
would suspend health care premium payments, leaving
them and their families without health care coverage
after August 31. CWA responded swiftly by telling
members that the union has taken steps to protect the
health and well-being of strikers and their families.

As the strike enters its second week, IBEW said that
Verizon's use of unskilled replacement workers to do
the job of trained union workers poses a significant
public safety risk, Verizon has found it difficult to
maintain service, and support for the strikers
continues to grow.

CWA called Verizon's plan to withhold health care
premium payments an attempt to weaken the resolve of
strikers and informed members that "CWA has made a
commitment to assist striking workers in paying for
their health care needs out of the Robert Lilja Members
Relief Fund." CWA also said that members should contact
their local union's Community Services Committee to
help decide how to best cover their medical needs
during the strike.

While Verizon seeks to weaken the resolve of its
striking workers, Ed Starr, business agent for IBEW
Local 2321 in Middleboro, Massachusetts, reports that
Verizon's unskilled replacement workers are committing
safety violations that would cause union workers to
"get written up in heartbeat" and will cause "someone
to get hurt unless Verizon settles this."

Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun reports that the strike
has caused repair delays. Verizon accused picketing
strikers of causing the delays, but injunctions by
judges have limited picketing at Verizon work locations
to a few union members.

Candice Johnson, a CWA spokesperson, said that the
delays were more likely caused by the replacement
workers. "With other companies, there have been
instances where replacement workers (and) contract
workers create more problems," Johnson said.

Customers in Virginia who depend on their land line
service also have reported service delays. In Concord,
Virginia, Sharon Martin told WSET-TV that she had been
without phone service for five days, which was
stressful because she has a medical condition that
sometimes requires trips to the emergency room.

Commenting on Martin's situation, CWA Local 2204
Vice-President James Woodson said that Martin's
experience shows that "Verizon doesn't care. It's plain
and simple." Woodson added that while Verizon may not
care about customers, CWA members do.

Because CWA members care about their customers, the
union has intensified its efforts to get Verizon to
bargain seriously so that a fair agreement can be
reached. Last Friday, the union filed unfair labor
practice charges against Verizon with the National
Labor Relations Board. The union asked the NLRB to
compel the company to follow US labor law and bargain
in good faith with its unions.

Johnson said that since day one of contract
negotiations Verizon has refused to budge from its
demand that workers accept $1 billion in concessions
that would significantly reduce their health care,
pension, and other union benefits. "This is
unacceptable from a company that is among the ten
wealthiest in America, that compensates the top five
executives at a level of more than a quarter of a
billion dollars over four years, that doesn't pay any
federal income tax, and still gets a $1.3 billion tax
rebate," Johnson said.

CWA is also seeking support from the wider community as
it tries to pressure Verizon into bargaining in good
faith. In less than a week more than 100,000 people
have signed a petition urging Verizon CEO Lowell
McAdams to get serious about bargaining and "stop
trying to push Verizon workers out of the middle
class."

"We will never have an economic recovery if profitable
companies like Verizon can demand huge concessions from
workers," Johnson said. "You don't build a middle class
by cutting workers' wages, benefits and standard of
living. That's just one reason why Verizon is becoming
synonymous with VeryGreedy."

CWA is also providing the public with a number of ways
that it can support the strike such as adopting a
Verizon Wireless store where flyers telling the workers
side of the story can be passed out, holding solidarity
rallies, and joining local picket lines of Verizon
workers.

At the national convention of the United Steel Workers,
CWA District 9 Vice-President Jim Weitkamp told the
steel workers that "Verizon has aligned itself with the
ultra right-wing in this country which is determined to
destroy collective bargaining in the United States.
They have their hand in the pocket of every
working-class family in this country. We will not stand
by and let them mug us in broad daylight."


Let's Learn the Right Lessons from Wisconsin

Dave Poklinkoski

August 17, 2011

http://labornotes.org/2011/08/lets-learn-right-lessons-
wisconsin



Two Democratic state senators in Wisconsin beat back
recalls yesterday, by 58 and 54 percent. That means
that in the nine recall elections held this month and
last, two incumbents were defeated, both of them
Republicans.

It was enough for unions to claim a victory, in the
sense that the Republicans' margin in the senate is now
down to one, and that one senator, moderate Dale
Schultz, voted against the union-busting legislation.
It is now unlikely that Right to Work and other
elements of the corporate right's agenda will pass.

With the first great electoral effort over--the second
being the inevitable recall campaign against Governor
Scott Walker--we should step back and examine some
lessons from the struggle to build a movement.

The uprising here was the awakening that labor movement
activists had long hoped for--disproving the modern
notion that those who work will not stand up for
themselves: Last winter several hundred thousand people
rallied in communities across the state.

Saying "Brother" and "Sister" and expressions of
solidarity had real meaning. People were exhausted but
energized. Community/labor coalitions emerged to build
for the future.

But the recall elections turned out to be an education
opportunity lost, in a sea of negative attack ads.

It seems that the "message people" saw the union
question as a divisive issue. The only ads that
discussed union rights came from the other side.

The millions of dollars in commercials in support of
the Democrats did not talk about unions, the history of
the labor movement, what we have done to create our
modern society, or why it is important for our
collective future that unions thrive. This in a state
that has some of the richest labor history in the
nation.

The commercials didn't address the fact that Walker had
taken public employees' union rights away--despite the
fact that it was the living and personal knowledge of
that history that drove many to the streets.

The other side was consistent in its message: They
needed to whack workers' rights to balance the budgets.
Our side, the side that is being whacked, did not
defend itself. Too often the theme seemed to be, "Why
can't we all just get along?" (Interestingly, now that
our rights have been stripped, Governor Walker's new
position is "we all need to work together.")

On the positive side, some commercials attacked tax
breaks for the rich and corporations and identified the
impact brutal budget cuts will have on schools. Some
politicians, like Dave Hansen in Green Bay, a 20-year
sanitation truck driver and Teamster, made stump
speeches as good as anything heard at a Labor Notes
conference. But these were not the main face of the
campaign.

It's worth mentioning that between the "bad guys" and
the "good guys," an estimated $35-$40 million was
poured into Wisconsin for the elections. Is this
historic moment going to come and go as a typical
election campaign, or can we create something
sustaining from all that cash? KNOW YOUR ENEMY

Monumental struggles are where people learn who and
what it is they are up against. It's where they build
the infrastructure to become better fighters for the
struggles to come.

In Wisconsin, local unions and community organizations
recognized that they have a lot of internal organizing
to do. Many have gotten on that task.

Some may want to go back to where they were, but, to
quote famed organizer Jerry Tucker, "There is no
'there' there to go back to."

If we are going to build a labor movement "from the
ashes of the old," let's build it based on an
understanding of how the world works and who the enemy
is, rather than on relentless rhetoric about a mythical
"middle class." We are toe-to-toe with capitalism's
brutal assault on the working class. Hundreds of
thousands in Wisconsin know it. We need to act like we
do.

The recall campaigns needed to talk about the Walker
austerity budget, to be sure. But the campaigns should
also have insisted on the importance of unions--which
gave working people what we have today and which are
necessary for a sound future.

That would have directly confronted the corporate
assault and laid the groundwork for future organizing.
This opportunity was lost. WE ARE WISCONSIN

In the recall effort a union-led coalition, We Are
Wisconsin, ran its own volunteers, literature, and
commercials, separate from the Democratic Party.

Over the weekend prior to the August 9 elections, We
Are Wisconsin saw more than 12,000 volunteers visit
nearly 300,000 doors. It was an impressive
infrastructure and many would say far superior to the
capacities of the Democrats.

We need electoral action as part of a comprehensive
campaign to rebuild the labor movement, but that can't
be the sole activity. If the only goal is to get
Democratic politicians elected, and to follow their
lead on what's acceptable to say and then to do once
elected--we've seen where that gets us.

American history has demonstrated that once a movement
is channeled into the Democratic Party, it dies. The
previous labor uprising in the 1930s, the anti-war
movement, and the civil rights movements all saw their
energy and organizational efforts moved off the streets
and away from the shop floor and into the electoral
politics of the Democratic Party. The movements stopped
there.

The struggle in Wisconsin gives us old and new lessons:
Workers and communities can indeed rise up against the
corporate agenda. An uprising can build the necessary
broad-based coalitions. It can lead to local unions
recognizing the need to organize internally and develop
solidarity unionism. And it may produce a glimpse of
something beyond the stranglehold of the traditional
corporate parties.

When significant moments in history arrive, we have to
make the most of them. We Are Wisconsin will come and
go, as so many electoral efforts past, unless we
realize who and what we are up against--and then act
like we know it.


Dave Poklinkoski is president of Electrical Workers
(IBEW) Local 2304 in Madison.

Labor Notes is a media and organizing project that has
been the voice of union activists who want to put the
movement back in the labor movement since 1979.

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