Unions Expect Verizon to Impose Terms, Ready to Walk Out Again

[Omaha Steve]

http://labornotes.org/2012/07/unions-expect-verizon-impose-terms-ready-walk-out-again

Jenny Brown | July 30, 2012

Verizon workers struck for two energetic weeks last summer in response to billions’ worth of concessions demands from the profitable telecommunications company. Now, after 12 more months of fruitless negotiations, 45,000 Communications Workers and Electrical Workers (IBEW) across the Northeast may be putting down their tools and walking out again.

"It's cut and dried that they want to break us," said Billy Gallagher, a CWA negotiator. Within a couple of weeks after the strike last year, he said, the company “went back to stripping 50 years of contract language.”


CWA members in Baltimore ask why all the affluent counties around the city have FiOS but Verizon hasn't installed its fast, efficient fiber optic system in the urban core. Photo: CWA.


In addition to attacks on health care and pensions, Verizon wants to obliterate restrictions on contracting out, a measure that could eventually threaten the union’s existence. Verizon already contracts out thousands of jobs, including installation, sales, and service, to non-union shops.

If Verizon tries to impose its final offer, a walkout could take place as soon as August 10.

FULL story at link.