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Verizon Wireless Rewards Longtime Workers with Pink Slips
The Communications Workers of America issued the following statement on the announcement by Verizon Wireless that it was closing two call centers in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area:
Some 1,700 workers at two Verizon Wireless call centers got a tough lesson in company loyalty as they learned their jobs will soon be moved to Wilmington, N.C. and elsewhere in the United States.
Verizon Wireless's announcement that it was closing centers in Morristown, N.J., and Orangeburg, N.Y., puts 1,700 workers, some with more than 10 years' experience, on the street or forces them to relocate hundreds or thousands of miles from their homes to keep their jobs.
The company sought to spin the closings as an investment opportunity, noting that the state of North Carolina was giving the company $10 million in incentives to relocate. But Verizon Wireless's action leaves the metropolitan New York-New Jersey community, home to the company's national headquarters and historically the core of Verizon Wireless service, with no customer call centers. Verizon Wireless also is shifting customer service work to Arizona, Tennessee, Utah, Maryland, Connecticut and upstate New York.
Verizon Wireless originally received a license to provide wireless service in New York and New Jersey because it was the dominant local telephone service provider in the area, and the Orangeburg and Morristown centers were opened to serve customers there. Now, Verizon Wireless is abandoning the workers and communities that helped make it successful.
While many workers at Verizon Wireless have been pressing for union representation by the Communications Workers of America to gain the benefits and safeguards that a union contract provides, Verizon Wireless has undertaken a systematic, anti-union campaign to block workers from exercising their federal rights, including arbitrary lawsuits and challenges to workers' right to a union voice.
CWA is reaching out to state and local elected officials to determine what action can be taken to help keep these quality jobs. If Verizon Wireless expects loyalty from workers and communities, it must show a commitment to keeping quality jobs in those communities.
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Some 1,700 workers at two Verizon Wireless call centers got a tough lesson in company loyalty as they learned their jobs will soon be moved to Wilmington, N.C. and elsewhere in the United States.
Verizon Wireless's announcement that it was closing centers in Morristown, N.J., and Orangeburg, N.Y., puts 1,700 workers, some with more than 10 years' experience, on the street or forces them to relocate hundreds or thousands of miles from their homes to keep their jobs.
The company sought to spin the closings as an investment opportunity, noting that the state of North Carolina was giving the company $10 million in incentives to relocate. But Verizon Wireless's action leaves the metropolitan New York-New Jersey community, home to the company's national headquarters and historically the core of Verizon Wireless service, with no customer call centers. Verizon Wireless also is shifting customer service work to Arizona, Tennessee, Utah, Maryland, Connecticut and upstate New York.
Verizon Wireless originally received a license to provide wireless service in New York and New Jersey because it was the dominant local telephone service provider in the area, and the Orangeburg and Morristown centers were opened to serve customers there. Now, Verizon Wireless is abandoning the workers and communities that helped make it successful.
While many workers at Verizon Wireless have been pressing for union representation by the Communications Workers of America to gain the benefits and safeguards that a union contract provides, Verizon Wireless has undertaken a systematic, anti-union campaign to block workers from exercising their federal rights, including arbitrary lawsuits and challenges to workers' right to a union voice.
CWA is reaching out to state and local elected officials to determine what action can be taken to help keep these quality jobs. If Verizon Wireless expects loyalty from workers and communities, it must show a commitment to keeping quality jobs in those communities.
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