Cwa Att Blog On Strike

Can you hear us now?

Picketers walk outside Verizon and Verizon Wireless offices, call centers, phone stores, garages and hundreds of workplaces from coast to coast. The lines are strong and growing. “Workers are being joined on the line by Communication Workers of America members from other companies and members of other unions as the battle continues to get the company to start bargaining seriously,” reports the CWA website.

CWA Local 9575 in Camarillo, Calif., which is picketing Verizon Wireless stores, reports widespread support and solidarity for the East Coast strike “from private and public sector union members, community and religious organizations, Verizon wireline and wireless customers, and thousands of others.” The union says United Postal Service drivers, letter carriers, caterers and trash haulers won’t cross picket lines. Passersby are bringing strikers food and water; and customers are asking how to help the strike. In one day, 15,000 people signed petitions demanding the company bargain in good faith.

When negotiations restarted on Aug. 10, Verizon hadn’t budged from the demands they made when talks began on June 22. Although proclaiming it must cut wages and benefits and outsource jobs to be “competitive” in a mostly nonunion industry, Verizon, unscathed by the recession, is one of the top 10 wealthiest U.S. corporations. The company earns $108 billion a year and $7 billion in profits. Verizon didn’t pay federal taxes last year — and even maneuvered a $1.3 billion tax rebate!

Workers say Verizon seeks to eliminate “middle-class” jobs and force them to accept rollbacks in wages and benefits to pre-union levels, similar to the paltry benefits of non-union employees in the wireless division — where Verizon has viciously fought union drives. Seeing the threat of Wal-Mart-type conditions, with no benefits or job security, workers were forced to strike since they had nothing to lose. They had to fight back.

AFGE Activists Support Our CWA Brothers and Sisters in Verizon ...

AFGE National Secretary-Treasurer J. David Cox and National Vice President/Women’s Fair Practices Director Augusta Thomas joined AFGE activists recently at a protest outside a Verizon wireless store. The protest was held in solidarity with members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) who are striking against Verizon.  During the past four years, Verizon paid its top executives more than $258 million—surely enough that they are not worrying about mortgage payments in neighborhoods like McAdam’s. But Verizon, which made more than $20 billion in profits during the past few years, is demanding $1 billion in concessions from its 45,000 union workers, or about $20,000 per worker. So far, more than 150,000 people have signed a petition supporting the workers and calling on Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam  to  get serious about bargaining and to stop trying to push Verizon workers out of the middle class.

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