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Verizon Unity Campaign Targets Rights at Wireless
About 50 CWA and IBEW activists from District 1, 2 and 13 delivered more than 12,000 postcards to CEO Ivan Seidenberg at Verizon headquarters in New York City, on July 29, as part of their joint mobilization for jobs and bargaining power throughout the company.
Seidenberg sent another executive to the lobby to receive the cart full of postcards, each signed by a union-represented employee, expressing pride at helping build the company, a desire for job security and demands that Verizon:
Stop the planned sale of its upstate New York properties.
*** Stop contracting out DSL tech support jobs.
*** Train union members for work in Voice over Internet Protocol.
*** Stop anti-union "brutality" and let workers at Verizon Wireless form a union.
CWA represents 71,000 Verizon employees. Another 30,000 at Wireless have been denied any real opportunity to form a union, even though Verizon and CWA negotiated a neutrality and card check agreement. That agreement expires Aug. 17.
"Despite Mr. Seidenberg's assertion to the contrary, Verizon-including Wireless-is one company," said District 1 Vice President Larry Mancino. "Our members will never let up until Verizon acknowledges that fact, negotiates a real card check agreement for Wireless and lives up to it in spirit and deed."
Also on July 29, nearly 1,000 CWA members, through the union's e-activist network, sent Seidenberg an e-mail asserting, "We will never give up until Verizon Wireless is union." The e-letters point out that "Union activists have been singled out and fired. Other employees are afraid to voice their support for the union. The 50 Wireless employees who belong to CWA are harassed by management on an almost daily basis."
CWA's sister unions in Union Network International have also joined the campaign. They have a stake, too, since extremely anti-union Vodafone, the largest worldwide cellular company, owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless. The Communication Workers Union, in the United Kingdom, has posted a news item about Verizon Wireless on their website, www.cwu.org, and asked their members to join in the e-activist campaign.
Seidenberg sent another executive to the lobby to receive the cart full of postcards, each signed by a union-represented employee, expressing pride at helping build the company, a desire for job security and demands that Verizon:
Stop the planned sale of its upstate New York properties.
*** Stop contracting out DSL tech support jobs.
*** Train union members for work in Voice over Internet Protocol.
*** Stop anti-union "brutality" and let workers at Verizon Wireless form a union.
CWA represents 71,000 Verizon employees. Another 30,000 at Wireless have been denied any real opportunity to form a union, even though Verizon and CWA negotiated a neutrality and card check agreement. That agreement expires Aug. 17.
"Despite Mr. Seidenberg's assertion to the contrary, Verizon-including Wireless-is one company," said District 1 Vice President Larry Mancino. "Our members will never let up until Verizon acknowledges that fact, negotiates a real card check agreement for Wireless and lives up to it in spirit and deed."
Also on July 29, nearly 1,000 CWA members, through the union's e-activist network, sent Seidenberg an e-mail asserting, "We will never give up until Verizon Wireless is union." The e-letters point out that "Union activists have been singled out and fired. Other employees are afraid to voice their support for the union. The 50 Wireless employees who belong to CWA are harassed by management on an almost daily basis."
CWA's sister unions in Union Network International have also joined the campaign. They have a stake, too, since extremely anti-union Vodafone, the largest worldwide cellular company, owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless. The Communication Workers Union, in the United Kingdom, has posted a news item about Verizon Wireless on their website, www.cwu.org, and asked their members to join in the e-activist campaign.