Verizon Brushes Off Majority Union Support by Business Techs; Attacks Unions and Employee Free Choic

As the House-passed Employee Free Choice Act works its way through Congress, Verizon has emerged as one of the legislation's fiercest opponents. Though employing 97,000 union members, the company has joined with the nation's most extreme anti-union elements in seeking to defeat the legislation that would enable workers to win bargaining rights once they demonstrate majority union support.

Verizon voiced its opposition in a 10-page, anti-union ("Union Awareness") e-mail to its Verizon Business technicians last week, claiming the measure would violate workers' right to a secret ballot in a union election. Yet Verizon's unstated but major objection is that workers would gain the ability to organize before an employer could crush their campaign. 

Sixty percent of the Verizon Business techs in the Northeast have already signed cards petitioning Verizon for recognition, as verified in card counts by elected officials in New York and Massachusetts.  Verizon's response has been to mount a classic union-avoidance campaign with mandatory meetings, supervisory one-on-ones and "fact sheets" full of distortions about unions.

Verizon's anti-union e-mail to the techs was careful to proclaim "respect" for its employees' right to form unions. But it showed disrespect for its CWA and IBEW-represented Verizon core employees, referring to unions as a "Third Party" that "impedes" the company's business and stands in the way of a "fair and open working environment." Verizon touted as "a good place for union information" the rabidly anti-union websites operated by the so-called Center for Union Facts, and bankrolled by the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Right to Work Committee.

The company encouraged the techs to send letters to Congress opposing the Employee Free Choice Act by going to websites sponsored by employer organizations. One called the "Alliance for Worker Freedom," www.workerfreedom.org, refers to unions as being run by "goons" and "hired thugs." Another, using the misnomer, Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, www.myprivateballot.com, falsely claims that it is made up of a "coalition of workers, employers, associations and organizations," yet no workers' groups are listed.

CWA President Larry Cohen blasted Verizon for breaking from the mainstream of the telecom industry and turning its back on its union employees and the nearly 60-year collective bargaining relationship the company has had with its unions.  "Since the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of CWA and IBEW members have worked to make Verizon and its predecessor companies into one of the nation's leading corporations," said Cohen.

"For top management to suggest that its union workers constitute a 'third party' who are 'impediments' to the company's business is an insult to every union worker who ever worked at Verizon – and they are due an apology," said Cohen, noting: "To Verizon's customers, union members are the very face of this company."