As Verizon Strike Continues, Workers' Struggle Gains Support Nationwide

Tens of thousands of working Americans, other unions, students, civil rights, religious, and community groups have joined union members' fight to get Verizon to bargain in good faith. More than 150,000 people so far have signed CWA's online petition, urging Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam to stop union-busting and negotiate fairly.

CWA Local 4340 members show support for striking members in Districts 1 and 2-13 by picketing a Verizon Wireless store in Cleveland.

Below: Members of AFSCME, the AFL-CIO central labor council, and Working America join members of CWA Local 6016 picketing a Verizon Wireless store in Oklahoma City.

As 45,000 striking union members close out their second week without a paycheck, their family members and friends have joined in with them on many of the more than 350 picket lines that have been formed outside Verizon corporate offices, garages, Verizon Wireless stores and other locations. CWA picket lines stretch from New York, the Mid Atlantic and Florida along the East Coast to the Mid-West and West Coast, and even in Hawaii.

Hundreds of CWA members outside the East and Mid Atlantic are continuing to show tremendous solidarity for strikers by picketing Verizon Wireless stores daily.

Three thousand delegates at the Steelworkers' convention this week in Las Vegas, cheered CWA District 9 Vice President Jim Weitkamp's call for them to join the fight. "You cannot be spectators," Weitkamp told USW delegates, stating that corporations are closely watching Verizon's attempt to carry the right-wing's attack on public workers in Wisconsin and New Jersey along to union members in the private industry.

"Educate your membership what this fight is all about, mobilize, and join us on the picket lines back East," Weitkamp said. Click here to read his speech.

The United Auto Workers is urging its members to adopt a Verizon Wireless store in their communities and join in picketing and hand-billing. In San Francisco, members of HERE, ILWU, OPEIU, joined with activists with Jobs with Justice and the BlueGreen Alliance rallied in support of striking Verizon workers.

In hundreds of events every day across the country, and in the Verizon East footprint, union members are spreading the message that Verizon's bargaining position is predicated on kicking its union workers out of the Middle Class. Outside Verizon Chairman Ivan Seidenberg's house last weekend, 3,000 workers and supporters held a candlelight vigil and memorial service for the Middle Class.

In New York City, some 1,000 CWAers rallied outside a city board of education event honoring Verizon.

A plane trailing a banner reading "Stop Verizon Greed" flew over beaches in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia last weekend.

Average citizens, retirees, and local elected representatives are joining CWA on the picket line. In Alexandria, Va., Del. David Englin, who represents Virginia's 45th District in the General Assembly, joined Local 2222 members this week and urged the company to start bargaining seriously. "I proudly joined members of Local 2222 and stand with them in their strike against Verizon," he said. "These are men and women who work long hours at highly skilled and dangerous jobs to keep America's vital telecommunications infrastructure working, even under hazardous conditions during the worst kinds of emergencies."

Englin questioned the company's failure to share its financial success with the workers who built and maintain the company. Noting that Verizon's CEO makes 1,000 times more than the salary of the average Verizon worker, Englin told the Old Town Alexandria Patch newspaper, "Does anyone seriously believe he works one thousand times harder or is one thousand times more dedicated, professional, and conscientious than men and women working on the front lines?"

Support is coming from newspaper columnists as well, including TNG-CWA Local 31041 member Bob Kerr with the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. In a column entitled "They walk for many as they walk the picket line," Kerr said it was "a wonderfully gutsy and revealing thing the union employees of Verizon are doing" for America's middle class. "They are on strike in one of the worst economic climates we have seen in decades. Yet many feel their timing couldn't be better."

Kerr praised striking union members at CWA and IBEW for taking a stand against the behavior of corporations who outsource Americans jobs to low-wage countries in Asia and Mexico while continuing to enrich themselves at the expense of workers' livelihoods. "The Verizon workers walk for a lot of us," he said. "They walk for many who probably don't think unions play any part in their lives. But they do." Kerr asked his readers to "Honk the horn, show your appreciation" when driving by a Verizon worker on the picket line. Click here to read Kerr's article.

At www.unityatverizon.com, supporters can sign the petition, join a picket line and take other action to help defend Verizon workers' bargaining rights.