Apr. 11, 2016
Following ten months of seemingly fruitless contract negotiations, roughly 40,000 Verizon workers will walk off the job on Wednesday, unless the company does a significant about-face before then.
Unionized cable splicers, line technicians, call operators and others represented by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers made the announcement Monday in a conference call with reporters. If it goes through, the strike would affect workers and customers in New York and New Jersey, as well as Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
"Unless this company reconsiders its shameful, and I do mean shameful, demands, our members will be on strike as of Wednesday April 13 at 6 a.m.," CWA president Chris Shelton said on the call. "Nobody wants to go on strike. It's a hardship for our members and their families. Its a hardship for customers who face delays in scheduling repairs and getting service."
At issue, the unions say, is a series of demands the company is making in seeking to ratify a new contract. Union leaders and workers said Verizon has threatened to ship jobs to Mexico and the Philippines, transfer workers away from their homes for months and weeks at a time, close down call centers, and make cuts to health and pension plans.
"Despite being one of the nation's most profitable companies ... Verizon has demanded massive cuts to employee health and retirement benefits," said IBEW president Lonnie R. Stephenson.
In response to Monday's announcement, Verizon leadership said the unions were walking away from the negotiating table.
“We’ve tried to work with union leaders to reach a deal,” said Marc Reed, Verizon’s chief administrative officer, in a statement. “Verizon has been moving the bargaining process forward, but now union leaders would rather make strike threats than constructively engage at the bargaining table.”
The company said that the employees in question have a wage and benefit package that averages $130,000 a year. It said that many of the employees affected worked on "wireline" or landline operations that it sees as increasingly less profitable.
"Over 99 percent of these employees support the wireline business which in 2015, contributed about 29 percent of Verizon’s revenue but less than 7 percent of the Company’s operating income," the company said in its statement.
Verizon said it had offered a 6.5 percent wage increase over the term of the contract, "access to quality and affordable" healthcare, and a 401K with a company match.
“A strike in this case is not going to change the issues on the table that need to be addressed,” Reed said. “Union leaders need to take an honest look at what Verizon is proposing.”
Workers are not the only ones irked at Verizon's behavior in recent months.
In an October letter to the company, 14 East Coast mayors including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown inveighed against the company for not providing its high-speed FiOS service to low-income customers.
"Based on irrefutable evidence of your company’s poor service record, lack of transparency and accountability, or demands for exclusive agreements with landlords throughout the region, we are deeply concerned that you have not acted like a good corporate citizen and that an incomplete FiOS rollout will result in decreased competition and the reduction of benefits to consumers throughout the Verizon footprint," the letter states.
The mayors also mentioned the labor dispute.
"Some of the issues in the labor negotiations are directly related to the issues we raise above," the letter states. "For example, after a decade in which the workforce has been reduced by a third,we have serious reason to be concerned that Verizon is not committed to job security."
Last year, 16 South Jersey municipalities filed a petition with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities saying Verizon had abandoned its copper service line maintenance which tends to affect older and lower-income residents.
And last month, the New York State Public Service Commission announced it was investigating Verizon's maintenance procedures as they relate to copper landline service.
“The service quality for these customers is just not meeting our service standards for the state,” PSC chair Audrey Zibelman said at the time. “We have an obligation to make sure their needs are being met.”
Verizon on Monday said it had trained thousands of non-union workers to cary out "virtually every job function handled by our represented workforce," in the event of a strike.
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