Feedback: An Open Letter from a Verizon Information Services Worker

This open letter from a CWA member was posted on VerizonRetirementWatch.com.

I am one of the 300 Verizon Information Services workers in New York who struck for 13 weeks for a fair contract. The contract has many improvements for us — among them keeping our health care cost increases at a bare minimum and saving our pensions.

I am not saying this to rub salt into wounds — quite the contrary. I take no joy in the fact that when we go back to work we will be looking into the faces of managers who have to bear very high health insurance costs, and at the same time have had their pensions, their security, stolen from them.

With the recent developments, I cannot imagine ever working in management for this company — I would be very fearful of working without the protection and strength that comes in numbers and unity. I urge all managers in this company — whether the telco side, VIS or Wireless — to fight and fight hard for union representation.

You may not win every battle (we didn't get everything we were looking for) but you will have some means of protecting your jobs, your benefits, your health, your sanity.

Eve Wegener
CWA Local 1118