This page confronts false statements made by Verizon regarding 2011 union contract negotiations.
CLAIM: The Union work rules impede efficient operations and quality customer service.
The Unions understand that in this competitive environment they must work with Verizon to create working conditions that promote high quality service and efficient operations. But all too often, Verizon management policies block frontline employees' ability to deliver quality customer service.
For example, almost ten years ago, CWA negotiated pathbreaking provisions that ensured call center employees would have a minimum of 30 minutes every day off the phones to solve customer problems. Verizon wants to eliminate this.
CWA has also negotiated language that ensures that customer inquiries will be directed to qualified customer service representatives in the United States who understand the products and service offerings and have the authority to solve problems. Verizon wants to eliminate such provisions so they can send more calls to lower-wage contractors or overseas.
CLAIM: Verizon has proposed minor changes in health care, pension, and other benefit packages.
Verizon's proposed benefit changes will decimate the middle-class living standards that CWA and IBEW have negotiated over the years.
Verizon wants to eliminate pensions for new employees and freeze them for current workers, at an estimated cost of $659 in pension benefits in the next three years alone.
Verizon wants to replace the current high-quality health care plan with a high-deductible plan requiring thousands of dollars in premium cost-sharing that will shift an additional $150 million in expenses onto employees in the first year alone.
Verizon wants to set up a two tier system of disability benefits, cutting benefits in half for newly hired workers.
Verizon wants to reduce the number of paid sick days, eliminate long-standing subsidies for employee child care; reduce tuition assistance; and eliminate flexible scheduling options that help workers balance work and family.
CLAIM: Verizon has invested significantly in its wireline business.
Verizon has largely stopped further expansion of its fiber-to-the-home FiOS network, leaving about 40 percent of Verizon's landline footprint without access to this advanced telecommunications network. Those without FiOS include many low-income and minority communities in major cities such as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Boston, and Buffalo. Without access to this high-speed Internet network, these populations will fall further behind on the wrong side of the digital divide.
At Verizon's recent quarterly earnings report for investors, the company reported that the FiOS build out is nearing an end and announced a new strategy is to move customers away from copper to FiOS where it exists and LTE where it doesn't, and even to combine FiOS and LTE broadband.
CLAIM: Verizon's landline business where CWA and IBEW members work is declining. The unions need to help Verizon become more cost-competitive.
Verizon is a highly profitable company, with $19 billion in profits. It is so profitable that the company has paid $258 million in compensation to its top five executives over the last four years. It does not need to slash workers' compensation. The success of Verizon's expanding wireless and data businesses were built off of earnings from the wireline side, and continue to depend on quality wireline networks for growth.
CWA and IBEW want to work with Verizon to devise strategies to provide high quality service to the public and build out FiOS as broadly as possible. CWA and IBEW want wireline workers to have access to the growing jobs in wireless, but Verizon refuses to negotiate job transfer provisions.