Chicago, Ill.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are now in bargaining on behalf of 80,000 Verizon workers at Verizon East, which covers New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia and West Virginia.
The current contracts expired at midnight, August 2.
In conjunction with these talks, CWA is also bargaining on behalf of Verizon Wireless workers in New York City, where the current contract expired August 1. Also as these talks go on, CWA members have been on strike against Verizon in Western North Carolina since May 19. The 150 members of this former GTE unit are striking over family and health issues—preserving their emergency family illness benefit, resisting the demand to take back days of sick leave and seeking relief from oppressive levels of forced overtime.
The unions’ bargaining goals include a fair wage settlement that recognizes their members’ productivity and contribution to Verizon’s success, strengthened employment security and access by members to new and unorganized job areas, pension increases, provisions aimed at reducing job stress and other improvements in members’ benefits and rights.
Verizon is seeking to gut hometown job protections, demanding concessions in health care coverage and continuing to degrade the union relations environment.
CWA negotiated hometown job protections in exchange for support of the Bell Atlantic and NYNEX mergers. Executives also received $80 million in bonuses for consummating the merger. Now Verizon seeks to abrogate the limits on movement of work.
In the face of rising health care costs, Verizon seeks to cap them and shift premium payments to the workers and retirees who have paid for their health benefits over the years by accepting lower wage increases in return for health security for their families. The unions have also worked with Verizon to save millions of dollars through joint health care cost containment programs.
Both unions reject any attempts to pick their members’ pockets through cost shifting, which would do nothing to address the root cause of rising costs and can only create tremendous turmoil. Instead, the unions have invited Verizon to join with other employers and citizens groups in the work of the National Coalition on Health Care to achieve a bipartisan national solution to this national problem.
Verizon has been posturing with the media and trying to justify workers’ concessions by claiming it is in trouble because of the bad economy and competitive forces, but the facts prove otherwise.
Verizon is the industry leader, with the biggest revenues and greatest market capitalization—20 percent higher than SBC’s—and profits last year of more than $4 billion, despite a poor economy.
The company’s success is shown in the way its executives reward themselves. Top executives made $427 million over the past six years. In fact, just as thousands of employees and union members were being laid off last fall, Executive Vice President Larry Babbio gave himself a big payday by cashing in $5.2 million worth of his Verizon shares.
Resolved: The AFL-CIO and its member unions support our affiliates, the CWA and the IBEW, and will do everything within our power and ability to lawfully help our unions and their members win a new contract that preserves hometown jobs and health benefits and improves current standards of pay and conditions.