Fighting for Jobs and Service in Rural America

Good jobs and satisfied customers go hand in hand. Which is why Verizon workers and consumers alike have a high stake in the company's scheme to unload its aging landlines on the telecom world's bit players — those with few resources to build out broadband service and few cares about the value of an experienced workforce.

The biggest battle is playing out in northern New England, where CWA and the IBEW have waged a highly visible, multi-state campaign to stop Verizon from selling its landlines to FairPoint Communications. In Virginia, CWA is fighting Verizon's demand for rollbacks in state public utility regulations — a step toward a possible sale of rural lines, union leaders expect. A sell-off already has taken place in Hawaii, adversely impacting both jobs and service.

"As Verizon tries to sell off networks and prevent workers from organizing, this turnout today makes one thing clear: we are Verizon," CWA District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton said at a huge summer rally outside company headquarters in New York City. "Verizon likes to advertise that 'it's the network.' We — the members of CWA and IBEW — are the network. We are the reason Verizon is the 13th largest corporation in America and made $6 billion in profits last year."

Selling the old networks in less profitable areas gives Verizon a green light to focus all its energy and resources on its state-of-the-art digital network, FiOS. While CWA supports the growth of FiOS and the jobs it is creating, union members say it's coming at the expense of upkeep on the traditional copper lines that millions of customers depend on. And they say selling to buyers that won't invest in repairs or broadband is no answer.

"FairPoint doesn't have the same capacity as Verizon to expand high speed Internet service throughout the northern states," said Darlene Stone, a CWA Local 1400 member and veteran employee at Verizon's Consumer Sales and Service Center in Burlington, Vt. "I believe the proposed sale would only make the growing digital divide between rural and urban areas much worse."

And that promises to be just one of the problems if Verizon persuades state regulators in New England to let the sale go forward. A survey returned by 1,026 CWA and IBEW members in August shows that employees' concerns about their pensions, health care and working conditions under FairPoint would lead more than half of them — and 80 percent of the most experienced workers — to leave the company.

Meanwhile in Virginia, CWA representatives have been urging officials to deny Verizon's request for virtual deregulation. The company "seeks deregulation to reduce its obligation to maintain the copper plant so that it can focus all its resources on FIOS network, which is only being deployed in select areas," Charles Buttiglieri, assistant to District 2 Vice President Pete Catucci, testified before the State Corporation Commission in Richmond.

CWA Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach said the Verizon issues in Virginia and elsewhere are central to CWA's Speed Matters campaign.

"Why does this matter? Because the Internet is the critical infrastructure for job growth, access to information, and democratic communications in the 21st century. Speed and price of connection determine what is possible," he said. "I heard a resident of rural southwestern Virginia testify with these words: 'We don't have broadband in my area. How can a child in southwestern Virginia on dial-up compete with a child in northern Virginia who has FiOS?'"