Unions Campaign to Block Verizon Sale

A sea of red shirts and chants of "Hey, hey, ho, ho, FairPoint has got to go" filled Monument Square in downtown Portland, Me., last month as more than 1,200 CWA and IBEW members shouted opposition to Verizon's proposed sale of 1.6 million landlines in New England.

Verizon wants to sell its lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to  FairPoint Communications for $2.7 billion. Union members from every state involved turned out for the rally. "I haven't seen people so riled up since the NYNEX strike of '89,"  CWA Local 1400 Vice President Anne Mussenden said.

"It was a large, angry, boisterous crowd," CWA Representative Paul Bouchard said. "The sale is a scheme. It's an attempt for Verizon to walk out on its obligations to rural subscribers. FairPoint's a small phone company; they're coming in here with huge debt and no resources to serve the subscribers."

As far as high-speed data transmission goes, those customers are already underserved, Mussenden said, explaining that the best that Verizon offers is DSL at 3.0 megabits. In some areas it's as low as 768 kilobits.

Fuming at the union campaign, FairPoint filed a legal memo with the Maine Public Utilities Commission in March to try to limit the union to labor and employment issues — with no mention of underserved rural communities — when testifying against the sale. The PUC rejected FairPoint's request.

"FairPoint's trying to muzzle us," Mussenden said. "Our whole fight is about the promises they're making to the public, and they're bringing nothing to Maine."

CWA has 350 service reps in the affected area and IBEW has 2,700 technicians. The unions began the joint campaign last May, arguing Verizon's obligation to provide quality phone service, and eventually high-speed broadband, across New England. The sale — to a company with a known aversion to organized labor -— would further threaten quality jobs and workers' collectively bargained benefits. Many local elected leaders have joined with the unions in urging Verizon to stop the sale.

For campaign updates, visit the website at www.stop-the-sale.org.