Verizon vs AT&T/Cingular: Two Attitudes Toward Workers' Rights

"I'm fighting for freedom here, but all I want is the freedom to join a union at my job at home." — John Linder, left, Verizon Business Tech, stationed in Afghanistan (Stationed with Linder, right, is Verizon core filed tech Tom Montgomery from Local 1108.)

As newspaper editorials and TV reports debate the pros and cons of the  Employee Free Choice Act, few in the news media bothered to report on the organizing success of thousands of former AT&T Wireless workers at Cingular beginning in August 2005.

In the campaign's first three weeks, 2,200 workers at Cingular (now part of the new AT&T) organized in Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In the fourth week, 2,400 organized in Virginia, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Wisconsin. By the tenth week, more than 10,000 had organized.

It was the most underreported labor story of the year: Under CWA's neutrality and card check agreement with Cingular, workers organized at more than 1,000 locations in 35 states and not a single employee was fired. Few experienced intimidation.

Most workers today now organize through "card check" — when a majority of workers in a bargaining unit sign cards supporting union representation.  "They are not 'intimidated' into signing up as Employee Free Choice Act opponents have suggested in outrageous TV commercials and newspaper ads," CWA President Larry Cohen said.

Like Cingular's leaders, executives at SBC and Bell South (now also part of AT&T) have said employees should be able to organize without being coerced, intimidated, or having to put up with months of mandatory anti-union meetings

"Our energy needs to be spent waging war on our competition, not on our employees," Cingular's first CEO, Steven Carter said.

Larry Barrett, an AT&T/ Cingular technician in Shaumberg, Ill, describing the organizing drive for CWA Local 4204, said management "didn't pressure us or try to interfere. Our union campaign was positive and without conflict. We didn't attack the company and they didn't attack us."

It's a different story at Verizon. There, top management has fiercely resisted employees' efforts to unionize at Verizon Wireless and Verizon Business. The company relies on intimidation and fear tactics, even firing union supporters.

Although 97,000 Verizon workers are represented by CWA and IBEW, management wants to keep its new, and faster growing divisions union-free. The company frequently boasts how well it treats its employees, yet repeatedly demonstrates that it doesn't respect its workers' right to organize rights. Last year, it also froze the pensions of its unrepresented Verizon core employees and managers.

This March, when 60 percent of Verizon Business technicians in the Northeast signed cards seeking union recognition, management responded with mandatory employee meetings, supervisory one-on-ones  and a 10-page long "Union Awareness" e-mail full off distortions about unions and workers' right to organize.

In its e-mail to the workers, Verizon proclaimed its "respect" for its employees' right to form unions, yet it showed disrespect for its 97,000 union employees, referring to them as "Third Parties" who "impede" the company's business and stand in the way of a "fair and open working environment."

Top management at Verizon has joined with the nation's most extreme anti-union elements to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. It claims the measure would violate workers' right to a secret ballot in a traditional NLRB-sponsored union election. In reality, Verizon opposes the legislation because it would enable workers to organize before an employer could effectively crush union support through fear and intimidation.

That's something Verizon learned after agreeing to a neutrality and card check agreement during bargaining with CWA in 2000. Within a year, employees at Verizon Information Systems sought to take advantage of card check to get a union. Nearly 80 percent of the 1,600 unrepresented VIS workers from New York to Virginia signed cards.

Ignoring its agreement to remain neutral, Verizon blocked the union through a series of legal proceedings and lawsuits.

From then until the VIS workers eventually gained recognition 14 months later, management held one-on-one meetings, threatened the loss of sales incentives, created an anti-union website and used other tactics forbidden by its agreement with CWA.

Not surprisingly, Verizon refused to renegotiate the neutrality and card check agreement in 2004 bargaining and has continued to use every means to prevent workers from organizing.