Telecom News - Rights Group Condemns Verizon’s Illegal Actions Against Workers

A blistering report from American Rights at Work denounces Verizon for interfering with workers trying to form unions, taking a "low-road" approach to what were once good jobs and letting service quality deteriorate for millions of customers.

"Broken Promises: Verizon Neglects Its Commitment to Provide Good Jobs and Quality Service," details how the company has taken aggressive and illegal actions to stop workers from exercising their rights to associate and organize.

"This report documents the lengths to which a corporation will go to trample its employees' rights, even to the detriment of quality service to millions of its customers and the future of good jobs in the industry," CWA President Larry Cohen said.

The just-released report includes first-hand accounts of management's abusive and intimidating behavior from Verizon technicians who have tried to organize through CWA and the IBEW.

Christopher Bloncourt, a Verizon Business technician in Monsey, N.Y., who'd posted a pro-union ad from the New York Times in his building, was one of the union activists singled out and humiliated by a visiting senior manager. His coworkers "couldn't even look me in the face" after that, he said. To make matters worse, Verizon moved a manager into the cubicle behind him. "I remember sitting in the parking lot, horrified, my stomach turning upside-down because I had to go in there," he said.

The assault on union rights and free association was so fierce at a Verizon worksite in Orangeburg, N.Y., that management banned employees from talking about the union even while on their lunch breaks. The NLRB found the company guilty of that and other abuses.

In Long Beach, Calif., where 170 DSL technicians are determined to organize through CWA, a senior manager flew in from New Jersey just before a vote the union narrowly lost last spring. The night before and day of the election, the man went from cubicle to cubicle campaigning against the union, telling workers, among other things, that there'd be no raises if the union came in.

Not an Isolated Incident

Harassment, bullying and other means of interfering with its workers' right to organize  "is part of a pattern of anti-union conduct by the company" targeting not just Verizon Wireless but also the company's union-represented division, Verizon Communications, the report said.

Threatening — and following through on its threats — to shut down worksites if employees organize isn't uncommon at Verizon, the report found. In 2001, management told workers at its Woburn, Mass., call center, that it would close the facility if they voted to unionize. Faced with National Labor Relations Board charges over supervisors' threats and other illegalities, Verizon settled the case and posted a notice agreeing not to break the law. Then the company shut down the call center and moved the work to South Carolina.

In Orangeburg — where workers were made to fear talking about the union even on their breaks — the company closed its facility. Those jobs and others from a worksite in Morristown, N.J., went to South Carolina, North Carolina and Arizona — all states, the report notes, with "right-to-work" laws that weaken unions.

A Textbook Case

As Verizon has moved from a landline to a largely wireless business, the report says it's become a "textbook example of 'double-breasting,'" a scheme by companies to keep any union-represented part of their business separate from non-union worksites. "Verizon created a wall between the approximately 97,000 employees in Verizon Telecom and the 35,000 employees at Verizon Business and Verizon Wireless," ARAW found.

Verizon Business technicians in New York state and New England keep running into that wall, with the company refusing to honor the card-check campaigns that show at least 65 to 75 percent of workers want to organize. "In my eyes, a union isn't against the company — we just want to protect ourselves from greed," technician Phil St. John said. "If we can make the company profitable, that's great. But let's see the profits trickle down."

Customers aren't treated much better, the report found, stating that Verizon has "shirked its responsibilities as a public utility, pursuing a race-to-the-bottom, low-road business model that is detrimental to both employees and customers."

The report sharply criticizes Verizon for failing to maintain or upgrade service for landline customers as the company spends its time and money instead on the more profitable fiber optic network known as FiOS.

Divesting itself of its rural landline service and other tactics designed to make ever-more profit at the expense of workers and customers has "detrimental ramifications," the report says, finding that the only winners are highly compensated Verizon executives. The company's top five managers earned a combined $68 million in 2006.

"Under Verizon's current business model, tens of thousands of secure, well-paying jobs are at the risk of disappearing," ARAW concludes. "The consequences of Verizon's actions go beyond its workforce, as communities lose good jobs, and customers suffer poor service while missing out on the benefits of high-speed broadband." 

Get the Report

The "Broken Promises" report is online at www.american rightsatwork.org. Click the report's link on the ARAW homepage.

"I encourage every CWA member to circulate this report widely among their friends, leaders in their community, and to elected officials in Congress," said Jeff Rechenbach, executive vice president and head of the National Telecom Office. "We cannot allow Verizon to continue to hide anymore behind assertions that it respects its workers' right to organize."