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In My Opinion: Labor's Fight Against Corporate Greed Starts at www.FairnessAtVerizon.com
At this writing, CWA is engaged in a struggle with Verizon Communications that can affect far more than the 78,000 union workers at this company's eastern region. Verizon threw down the gauntlet with demands to strip all job security protections from the contract and to start shifting health care premium costs to both active workers and retirees. For good measure, the company proposed taking away limits on forced overtime and other measures to reduce stress among call center employees - issues that our members struck over for 18 days in 2000.
When the biggest and wealthiest of the telecom companies - a Fortune 10, as they like to call themselves - tries to impose concessions such as these, it sounds an alarm call to the whole labor movement. And indeed, the AFL-CIO is responding with a program to enlist millions of union members across the country in our Fairness at Verizon campaign.
Verizon's top executives, who collected almost half a billion dollars in salaries, bonuses and special stock deals the past four years while scheming to make our members and retirees pay for it, are becoming the poster boys for corporate arrogance and greed. And by the thousands, working people are joining the fight against greed by signing up at our website, www.FairnessAtVerizon.com (campaign is now over).
So far, three weeks now after the August 2 contract expiration, we have deferred an actual strike while talks have continued with help of a federal mediator. The continuing threat of a strike is forcing Verizon to keep spending some $1.5 million per day to maintain a contingent strike workforce. Meanwhile, our members keep pressure on the company through a variety of mobilization activities, and we are making plans for what might be called a "virtual strike."
CWA's strategy is a response to the fact that Verizon clearly was prepared for us to strike right away on August 2, and perhaps may have wanted to provoke a walkout to try to wear our members down and impose its will. So we decided to use tactics that they weren't prepared for.
Part of the strategy calls for collecting tens of thousands of pledges from people who sign on to our Fairness campaign and agree that they will switch their local service to AT&T, or drop enhanced features like Call Waiting, if talks break down and we decide to implement the carrier switch. This option only became possible recently when AT&T became a local service competitor in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.
The threat of switching potentially millions of dollars worth of business from Verizon has the same effect as a strike threat - impacting the employer's revenues – without the hardships an actual strike deals to our members and their families. It's a weapon we would only use as a last resort, and the intent would be to implement the plan only for the duration of the labor dispute.
Ironically, while Verizon executives yelp that this plan would damage the business and cost jobs, a temporary carrier switch by union members and allies would do far less harm to the company than the actual walkout they seemed to want to provoke. With rampant competition in telecommunications today, a strike would drive business customers away permanently to competing carriers.
Our struggle could be a lengthy one. As I write this, at a critical time in negotiations when we are working hard to reach a fair settlement, Verizon executives have created a huge distraction. CWA filed suit against the company and two senior executives charging violation of federal anti-wiretapping laws, potentially a criminal offense.
The two executives secretly plugged into, and apparently taped, an invitation-only CWA conference call with a select group of reporters. Any of our members would be fired on the spot for tapping into a private management conference call, yet Verizon encourages its top executives to engage in such unethical and illegal activity.
Almost comically, the Verizon officials gave themselves away the next day by fueling a petty legal complaint alleging that a union officer on the call had paraphrased their advertising slogan, "Can you hear me now?" Maybe they should change the slogan to, "We can hear you, whether you know it or not."
Verizon would be better off to focus on bargaining instead of spying on us, for the stakes are high all around. Our members are determined not to sacrifice their jobs, their health security, their families' future to the imperious demands of executives who want to squeeze profits from worker concessions rather than create wealth the old fashioned way - by building the business.
Every CWA member can join in this fight. Sign up at www.FairnessAtVerizon.com. Urge five family members and friends to do the same, and ask them to enlist five more. Ultimately, every working family has a stake in the outcome.
When the biggest and wealthiest of the telecom companies - a Fortune 10, as they like to call themselves - tries to impose concessions such as these, it sounds an alarm call to the whole labor movement. And indeed, the AFL-CIO is responding with a program to enlist millions of union members across the country in our Fairness at Verizon campaign.
Verizon's top executives, who collected almost half a billion dollars in salaries, bonuses and special stock deals the past four years while scheming to make our members and retirees pay for it, are becoming the poster boys for corporate arrogance and greed. And by the thousands, working people are joining the fight against greed by signing up at our website, www.FairnessAtVerizon.com (campaign is now over).
So far, three weeks now after the August 2 contract expiration, we have deferred an actual strike while talks have continued with help of a federal mediator. The continuing threat of a strike is forcing Verizon to keep spending some $1.5 million per day to maintain a contingent strike workforce. Meanwhile, our members keep pressure on the company through a variety of mobilization activities, and we are making plans for what might be called a "virtual strike."
CWA's strategy is a response to the fact that Verizon clearly was prepared for us to strike right away on August 2, and perhaps may have wanted to provoke a walkout to try to wear our members down and impose its will. So we decided to use tactics that they weren't prepared for.
Part of the strategy calls for collecting tens of thousands of pledges from people who sign on to our Fairness campaign and agree that they will switch their local service to AT&T, or drop enhanced features like Call Waiting, if talks break down and we decide to implement the carrier switch. This option only became possible recently when AT&T became a local service competitor in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.
The threat of switching potentially millions of dollars worth of business from Verizon has the same effect as a strike threat - impacting the employer's revenues – without the hardships an actual strike deals to our members and their families. It's a weapon we would only use as a last resort, and the intent would be to implement the plan only for the duration of the labor dispute.
Ironically, while Verizon executives yelp that this plan would damage the business and cost jobs, a temporary carrier switch by union members and allies would do far less harm to the company than the actual walkout they seemed to want to provoke. With rampant competition in telecommunications today, a strike would drive business customers away permanently to competing carriers.
Our struggle could be a lengthy one. As I write this, at a critical time in negotiations when we are working hard to reach a fair settlement, Verizon executives have created a huge distraction. CWA filed suit against the company and two senior executives charging violation of federal anti-wiretapping laws, potentially a criminal offense.
The two executives secretly plugged into, and apparently taped, an invitation-only CWA conference call with a select group of reporters. Any of our members would be fired on the spot for tapping into a private management conference call, yet Verizon encourages its top executives to engage in such unethical and illegal activity.
Almost comically, the Verizon officials gave themselves away the next day by fueling a petty legal complaint alleging that a union officer on the call had paraphrased their advertising slogan, "Can you hear me now?" Maybe they should change the slogan to, "We can hear you, whether you know it or not."
Verizon would be better off to focus on bargaining instead of spying on us, for the stakes are high all around. Our members are determined not to sacrifice their jobs, their health security, their families' future to the imperious demands of executives who want to squeeze profits from worker concessions rather than create wealth the old fashioned way - by building the business.
Every CWA member can join in this fight. Sign up at www.FairnessAtVerizon.com. Urge five family members and friends to do the same, and ask them to enlist five more. Ultimately, every working family has a stake in the outcome.