According to Bob Mudge, company president for wireline network operations, Verizon has deployed around 20,000 of non-union workers to take the slack left by the striking workers. “If a hugely profitable corporation like Verizon can destroy the good family-supporting jobs of highly skilled workers, then no worker in America will be safe from this corporate race to the bottom”. We simply can not compromise on contract changes that would ship more work overseas and have our families separated for months at a time, said Ed Mooney, CWA District 2-13 VP, in a statement. The company’s wireline business is no longer as profitable as its wireless business. “And it wants to push communities down by not fully repairing the network and by not building out FIOS”. “We’ve been trying to bargain with them, and they don’t want to bargain”. A week or two after the strike, Verizon should be able to continue doing new installations. But workers’ contract negotiations with Verizon have been stalled for months over the outsourcing of customer service to foreign countries, resulting in the loss of jobs domestically, and the rising expectation that workers must temporarily relocate in order to service distant parts of Verizon’s network. Unfortunately, union leaders have their own agenda rooted in the past and are ignoring today’s digital realities. “This another classic example of the CWA coming to the table and offering nothing”, said the company. They include installers, customer service employees, fix workers and other service workers in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
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In preparation for these unforeseen events, Verizon has trained thousands of non-union workers to maintain the company’s services. In 2012, agreements between Verizon and the unions were ultimately achieved through mediation conducted under the auspices of FMCS.
But Verizon says that union leadership “needs to be realistic”.
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The striking workers are members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
