In My Opinion: Verizon Dishonors Its Commitments - and Itself

A major reason that CWA members at Verizon in the former Bell Atlantic region endured a strike last year was to open up the growing non-union areas of the company to unionization through neutrality and card check organizing rights.

The strikers thought they had won a great breakthrough when Verizon signed agreements pledging to let workers at Verizon Information Services and at Verizon Wireless organize without management intimidation and gain representation quickly through a showing of majority union support.

But those strikers, and our union, have been betrayed.

Rather than honor its commitments, Verizon trotted out its expensive lawyers to engage in every kind of legal trickery they could think of to block these workers from exercising their rights to join CWA. Here’s the outrageous story.

An overwhelming majority of the 1,700 workers at Information Services, the yellow pages sales force, signed union authorization cards months ago, but Verizon continues to refuse to grant recognition.

In accordance with the contract, CWA filed union authorization cards with the American Arbitration Association for 500 Information Services workers in New York, and this past March the AAA certified CWA as their bargaining agent. Meanwhile, Verizon interfered with the process by pressuring some workers to ask to have their cards returned then tried to get the AAA to reverse the certification. The AAA refused to bow to Verizon, so the company went into federal court in New York to try to set aside union recognition. Of course, that case will be pending for as long as the company can string it out.

Then, because Verizon didn’t honor the AAA certification in New York, CWA filed for a National Labor Relations Board election for New Jersey Information Services workers. But the company lawyers brought legal action to block a federal union election, claiming the neutrality and card check agreement prohibits an NLRB organizing campaign. So, on the one hand they stymie the AAA process in the courts, and on the other, say to the NLRB that the AAA route is the only way to go.

And there’s more. Verizon used further legal maneuvering to frustrate Wireless workers by taking unreasonable positions on the scope of bargaining units, lying shamelessly about personal conversations between me and Co-CEO Ivan Seidenberg, and miring the whole process in arbitration.

At the same time — in a total mockery of the “neutrality” we agreed to — Verizon Wireless put up an Internet site for employees that is nothing but an attack on unions and CWA in particular.

I’m personally disappointed in Verizon’s Co-CEOs Chuck Lee and Seidenberg for adopting this anti-union strategy. CWA forged a genuine partnership with GTE under Lee’s leadership. And Seidenberg has always bragged that he came up through the ranks from his days as a cable splicer and said he wore his Local 1101 jacket with pride. I remember standing with Seidenberg, as former head of Nynex, when Labor Secretary Robert Reich publicly lauded our joint training efforts and declared Nynex the model for progressive labor relations.

What has happened to Verizon? The anti-union culture of the original Bell Atlantic “South” now seems to have spread like cancer through the new merged company and to have taken possession of its top management.

Clearly, Verizon’s objective is to contain CWA where we now represent members and to do whatever it can, no matter the cost, to stop us from growing into new lines of business.

To spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to frustrate the efforts of thousands of workers to gain representation, all the while poisoning the morale of its union workers and creating discord with CWA, is poor management — and we’re taking that message to shareholders, regulators and Verizon customers.

Verizon needs to be working to improve service and burnish its reputation instead of attacking its workers. That’s what we are telling the public in a TV, radio and print campaign (see Campaign Pressures Verizon To Keep Promises to Workers).

We have urged the Federal Communications Commission to block Verizon’s request to provide long distance service in Pennsylvania, citing the company’s attempt to enlist our members in covering up service problems in New York as well as its refusal to honor its written agreements with our union. A company that can’t be trusted either by its employees or its customers doesn’t deserve to be deregulated.

And we are receiving the backing of the entire labor movement in shining a light on Verizon as one of the premier corporate enemies of workers’ rights.

Verizon’s stance gives us no choice but to pursue this route and to escalate these efforts if need be.

We have had good relations with most of our employers over the years, and certainly that has been true with the latest Verizon merger partner, GTE. Working together is always our preference, but when a company like Verizon beats up on our brothers and sisters, such as at Information Services and Wireless, the company must know that they take on all of us.

The future course of relations between CWA and Verizon is now up to the company’s top managers.