Slashdot Mirror
About 40,000 Unionized Verizon Workers Walk Off the Job (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: In one of the largest U.S. strikes in recent years, nearly 40,000 Verizon workers walked off the job on Wednesday after contract talks hit an impasse. The event got a boost as U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders joined them at a Brooklyn rally ahead of the New York primary next week. The strike was called by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers that jointly represent employees with such jobs as customer services representatives and network technicians in Verizon Communications Inc's traditional wireline phone operations. The strike could affect service in Verizon's Fios Internet, telephone and TV services businesses across several U.S. East Coast states, including New York, Massachusetts and Virginia. Verizon and the unions have been talking since last June over the company's plans to cut healthcare and pension-related benefits over a three-year period. The workers have been without a contract since its agreement expired in August. Issues include healthcare, offshoring call center jobs, temporary job relocations and pensions.
Perhaps, but we need more of this. People standing up to large corporate interests who just want to keep cutting jobs, pay, and benefits is a good thing. That so many working people are brainwashed to believe otherwise is a tragedy.
Corporations gain bargaining power by (allegedly) shareholders pooling capital. It's very hard to find someone who'll argue that corporations shouldn't act in their own interests. Why is it therefore wrong for labor to do the same? It isn't, and it's way past time for workers to figure that out.
We've all endured more injustices than what started the American Revolution in the first place--those injustices then being both government and corporate just like today (The Boston Tea Party was a revolt against corporate welfare, not against taxes. Go look it up.) Yet we can't even fathom actually doing something about it. This needs to change.
I wish these workers good luck. They're gonna need it with all the corporate media and paid shills everywhere about to be against them.
It's a power struggle between union and management, and although I think a fair deal can be reached, the management clearly needs to be sent a signal.
We simply don't care any more about increasing share holder value at the expense of jobs.
The UAW strikes didn't cause the outflow of employment from Detroit. It was a consequence of NAFTA cheapening the import cost of goods made in Mexico.
Since it's really off topic, I'd prefer not debating the merits and problems of NAFTA here. Yes, union negotiating and poor management did contribute. But the union strikes weren't the single cause of that employment offshoring.
How is striking going to convince a corporation to stop offshoring and automating jobs? It seems to me that it will convince them to do more.
Notice the groups mentioned in TFS, including an "Electrical Workers" union.
Verizon can't really "offshore" or "automate" electrical wire installations in houses or businesses, or electrical repairs that need to be tailored to a specific location.
Granted, some of the other striking workers may be in service applications that could theoretically be sent overseas, but as long as the workers who do actual work that is required to be physically located within the U.S. are standing in solidarity with the other workers, Verizon could be a heap of trouble without those folks.
Not every job can be offshored. Skilled trades that deal directly with customers' equipment at a physical location (electricians, plumbers, etc.) are harder to offshore than just about anything else... including management.
the root of the problem is that unionized workers are lazy shit bags that work in a business unit that is slowly dwindling away.
source: 2 yrs of having to deal with their bullshit.
I disagree. The problem is not the union workers. It is the whole VZ system.
The reason the business unit is fading away is the upper management has underfunded everything in wireline. I visited one plant where the furniture was from the 70/80s and equally nasty to show for it.
It was amazing frustrating to do *anything* in that company. Most projects that should take 3-6 months front to end take 2-3 years to do. That is with 0 union employees involved. I would regularly see projects canceled not because they were bad. But simply because someone else in the company wanted to do the exact same thing and then never deliver on it. Poor technical decisions made at upper levels based on something along the lines 'its always been done that way'.
The whole thing is being setup to be sold off to other phone companies leaving only VZW left.
source: 7 years as VZ wireline non union employee who no longer works there