Verizon workers vote to authorize strike, if necessary
Source: Times Union
By STEVE ROTHWELL
NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon workers in nine states have voted to go on strike if necessary over a dispute about a new contract, a union official said at a rally Saturday.
"Our members are clear and they are determined," said Dennis Trainor, an official with the Communications Workers of America union. "They reject management's harsh concessionary demands."
At the rally in New York, the CWA announced that 86 percent of Verizon workers who voted in a recent poll backed strike action if required. A contract that covers 39,000 workers represented by the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers expires at midnight on August 1.
The contract covers employees the nine states from Massachusetts to Virginia who work for Verizon's wireline business, which provides fixed-line phone services and FiOS Internet service.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/news/us/article/Verizon-workers-vote-to-authorize-strike-if-6405524.php
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And a few of the wireless stores in Manhattan are union.
No one else is.
I think they will be successful.
There was a 14% workforce reduction (layoffs) on the wireless side of the house (two entirely different businesses) with folks last day on February 28th. They cut from the profitable side (killing worker morale in wireless) perhaps to pay for these concessions.
There's no will in wireless other than a few stores in Manhattan to be unionized. The move from a dumb wireless pipe to content signals a move towards a Google/Facebook culture. Yesterday the wireline employees wore suits. Wireless wore sandals and jeans and t shirts and covered shoulder sundresses and linen clam diggers to work.
It's a different mindset that was brought in ten years ago with a huge hiring focus on gen x workers on the wireless side.
You have two opposing cultures at work here. Wireline cringed at the sale of the west properties and the purchase of AOL. Wireless clapped.
If you ask me - the best thing would be to continue those sales to companies like Citizens/Frontier. That way wireline focus can get support and wireless focus isn't held back by not being able to have water coolers at the mother ship because not every union employee has one at their location.
It's those small things that will attract Gen x from other forward industries to come over - and millennial interns to come back when they complete their degrees. That might seem silly - water coolers - but I'm giving you insight into the cultures of the two companies.
Yes - two companies - One Finance be damned.
I think they will secure the union employees to make that product set look "solid" on paper. In looking at the stories from the strike 4 years ago - nothing has changed. Wireline is still down - and no one who could lead the business unit in 5 years wants to focus on that.
Put it this way - if your unit/function gets moved to wireline the perception is that you are being personally punished.
we SUPPORT you !
