Protests on Both Coasts against Verizon Anti-Worker Policies

Verizon's anti-union tactics and business policies were spotlighted last week by thousands of CWA and IBEW members who held simultaneous rallies in front of the corporation's offices in New York City and Long Beach, Calif.

In New York, more than 3,000 cheered Verizon Business technician John Sweeney who spoke passionately about the need for the technicians to keep up their struggle to organize. He challenged management to respect the wishes of a majority of techs who have already signed cards to join the union. View his remarks at You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWf0IlGI1is.

In Long Beach, hundreds of union members protested the company's violation of its neutrality agreement with the CWA earlier this year when it used heavy-handed tactics to frighten unrepresented employees into voting against representation. Top executives were sent from New York to visit workers at their cubicles, literally going desk to desk to discourage employees from joining the union. Union members in California also protested the company's overtime policies and the outsourcing of jobs.

At both demonstrations, workers spoke out against the company's planned sale of its local access lines in New England to a tiny and ill-equipped North Carolina-based company called Fairpoint.