Senior Verizon Exec Goes "Cubicle to Cubicle" To Coerce DSL Techs Before Election in Long Beach

At the apparent instruction of Denny Strigl, Verizon's president and chief operating officer, the corporation dispatched a senior vice president to the West Coast to personally carry the company's anti-union message to a unit of 170 DSL technicians who were trying to organize Verizon's Maintenance Control Office (MCO-West) in Long Beach, Calif.

The day before the April 20 election, Michael Poling, Verizon's senior vice president for network operations, walked "cubicle to cubicle" urging the workers to rethink their support for a union, and telling them, according to witnesses, "You will not get raises. You will not get under the union contract." He also reminded the workers that, although they are core Verizon employees, "we are under wireless now," a reference to Strigl's harsh anti-union stance when he headed Verizon Wireless.

Verizon's tactics, a violation of the company's "neutrality and expedited election" agreement with CWA, worked, scaring off enough union support to defeat the workers' campaign for bargaining rights. The vote was 79-72. Three weeks earlier, 105 of the 170 workers signed authorization cards supporting union representation.

CWA has accused Verizon of violating the contract by coercing and intimidating the workers in charges filed with the arbitrator who oversaw the election.

"Management disregard for the contractual provisions on neutrality and organizing rights is exactly why workers need the greater protections offered by the Employee Free Choice Act," said CWA President Larry Cohen. "Getting a personal visit the day before a union election from a company senior vice president carrying an anti-union message is intimidating and coercive as well as a clear violation of the neutrality provisions of the contract.  Current labor laws are not adequate when major corporations like Verizon readily proclaim their respect for workers' rights while feeling free to engage in this kind of abusive behavior toward employees," Cohen said.

According to a mid-level manager, Verizon COO Strigl stressed the importance of defeating the DSL workers' union drive during a conference call held for Verizon managers in California at the beginning of April. From then until the election, workers were deluged almost daily with e-mails attacking the union and collective bargaining. Two days before the election, Poling and two managers sent in from Verizon's union-represented MCO unit in Silver Spring, Md., urged supervisors to do all they could to convince their coworkers to vote no.