UNION BUSTING AT VERIZON

Verizon Communications had traditionally respected its workers. Unfortunately, in recent years management has begun aggressively interfering with employees right to a union, especially in their newer wireless and business divisions to prevent workers from forming unions.

As the company grows, management has erected an internal wall to segregate workers into lower-paying jobs and to keep them from uniting by claiming that Verizon Wireless (VZW) and Verizon Business (VZB) are separate entities and their workers are not entitled to the same working conditions and benefits as traditional land line worker. VZB & VZW workers are cut-off from the nearly 95,000 workers at Verizon who are already united in the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). In recent contract negotiations, Verizon Business workers won the right to a union, but the wireless division is still struggling.

Workers at Verizon Wireless (VZW) lack basic workplace rights and receive inadequate health and retirement benefits. When they have tried to organize to fix these problems, VZW has conducted a campaign of illegal firings, threats, intimidation, and worker surveillance and has even shut down Northeast call centers where workers were organizing and moved them to “right to work” states. Click here for information on union wireless and ways to support Verizon Wireless workers! Click here for more info on this campaign.

Verizon Wireless workers need the support of allies to fight back attack on workers’ rights! What’s at Stake?

Good Jobs: The traditional telecommunications industry has historically been a source of good jobs for workers without a college education, and particularly for women and workers of color.

These high job standards are largely the result of collective bargaining which lifted the industry. Currently, the contract for unionized Verizon workers provides:

Wages well above the national average.

Retirement Security. Verizon workers are some of the few workers left in this country with a defined benefit pension. This means that they will receive a set amount of money each month from when they retire until they die.

Health Care. Current workers do not have to pay for their health care.
Retired workers also receive health benefits.

As Verizon expands into new technologies, we must hold the line and fight to ensure that telecom jobs remain good jobs.These jobs help set the standard in our economy and we must fight to defend them .

Verizon’s History of Union-Busting

2000 CWA begins organizing at Woburn, MA, Verizon Wireless (VZW) call center. NLRB issues complaint against VZW for prohibiting discussion of union, surveillance, interrogation and threats to close. Woburn center is subsequently closed and work moved to Columbia, SC. 500 lose their jobs.

2000 After strike, VZ agrees to neutrality/card check at wireless in the NE. Then VZW surveys all workers on union sentiments, begins mandatory training of all employees on “union awareness,” launches web site attacking union, evaluates supervisors’ raises based upon carrying out “union awareness” strategy and dispatches headquarters teams to any location with union activity.

2001 CWA files petition for VZW employees in 3 stores in Bakersfield, CA. After a series of captive audience meetings, NLRB conducts election and impounds ballots for 2 years; when counted, we do not prevail.

2003 CWA intensifies organizing activity at several VZW call centers. Hundreds of house visits are made in MD, CT, NY, and PA. VZW pays employees to attend meetings where CWA is trashed and employees’ salaries, benefits and job security are threatened.

2004 Three VZW workers from Orangeburg, NY, customer service center appear in a CWA video to describe anti-union campaign and fear at work. VZW fires all three workers.

CWA begins card signing at Orangeburg. As union support grows, VZW closes Orangeburg and Morristown, NJ, call centers and moves the work to the Carolinas. More than 1,500 workers lose their jobs.

Three VZW workers from Orangeburg, NY, customer service center appear in a CWA video to describe anti-union campaign and fear at work. VZW fires all three workers.

CWA begins card signing at Orangeburg. As union support grows, VZW closes Orangeburg and Morristown, NJ, call centers and moves the work to the Carolinas. More than 1,500 workers lose their jobs.

NLRB issues complaints against VZW for terminations for supporting union organization as well as for retaliatory discipline against other union activists, enforcement of an illegal rule against union solicitation, and interference with employee discussions of their pay and conditions at VZW.

2006 Verizon acquires historically anti-union MCI and sets up as separate Verizon Business.

2007 Five members of Congress verify that a majority of technicians in Verizon’s business division in NY and New England want union representation, but VZ continues to deny recognition. Unfair Labor Practice charges have been filed regarding the company’s interference with the rights of workers at Verizon Business.

When workers at a Long Beach, CA Verizon DSL Service Center tried to organize this year, they faced similar interference. Eight technicians have testified that the company used coercive tactics in a union election that workers lost by 7 votes in April. The day before the election, Verizon's senior vice president for network operations, Michael Poling, went cubicle to cubicle telling the workers, "You will not get raises. You will not get under the union contract." According to a mid-level manager, VZ C.O.O. Denis Strigl stressed the importance of defeating the union drive in a conference call for managers in CA. From then until the vote, the company deluged workers almost daily with e-mails attacking the union and collective bargaining.

Verizon’s Corporate Structure

Verizon Communications, Inc is split into three divisions:

Verizon Telecom: operates wired landline services for homes and small businesses.

Verizon Business: operates wired landline services for large domestic and international customers. (This division was created when Verizon bought MCI in 2006.)

Verizon Wireless: operates the company’s wireless network.

Verizon’s corporate structure appears to be a textbook case of union-bustingdouble-breasting,” where the owner operates a non-union business separate from its union business in order to avoid having all of its employees covered by a union contract. through a tactic called “

When the company formed in 2000 out of the merger of Bell Atlanic and GTE, it inherited a decades-long collective bargaining relationship with CWA and IBEW. Through double-breasting, Verizon has been able to segregate the approximately 97,000 union-represented employees into Verizon Telecom, while keeping Verizon Business and Verizon Wireless non-union.