Verizon Workers Strike as Contract Talks Stall

A strike by Verizon workers took to the streets in Cranston today as members of the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2323 worked strike shifts outside the Chapel View shopping center on the sidewalk along Route 2.

45,000 Verizon Communications workers began the strike on Sunday after contract talks with the corporation stalled last week. In Rhode Island, there are 843 employees who belong to the IBEW Local 2323 and they have been working shifts throughout the state in front of Verizon retail stores and company-owned offices.

Union members said the telecom giant has a list of demands that are out of line with comparable contracts in other industries. At a time when Verizon had $1.61 billion in quarterly profit last quarter, they're expecting workers to give up far more than what's fair, they said.

"All we want is a fair contract," said Local 2323 member Rick Byrne, a Verizon service support technician. "It's about job security and what's fair."

Bryne said workers are concerned about their jobs being outsourced and concession demands that would make it difficult for some workers to support their families. 

Union officials said the contract talks broke down after Verizon "continued to seek to strip away 50 years of collective-bargaining gains for middle-class workers and their families," according to a CWA release.

The employees in both unions do not pay for their health-care benefits, but that isn't the heart of the dispute, striking workers said Tuesday outside on Route 2. And the workers have agreed to some concessions and health insurance cost sharing, much like many municipal employee unions have agreed to. Verizon isn't a cash-strapped municipality, Byrne said, but it's approaching the contract talks as if it were.

"Verizon’s emasculation of your medical benefits for active and retired members would erode your standard of living and cost you thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses," IBEW Local 2323 President Steve Murphy told union members on Aug. 6. "You would also lose your current plans; they would be replaced by a 3rd-party administrator with the ultimate authority to deny you necessary treatment."

In a release, Verizon said the company has "activated a contingency plan to ensure customers experience limited disruption in service" during the strike. That entails dispatching about 10,000 contract workers the company trained for contingency purposes.

Marc C. Reed, Verzion's executive vice president of human resources said "It's regrettable for our employees and our customers that the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have decided to walk away from the table instead of continuing to work through the issues."

Union leaders state the opposite, alleging Verizon walked away from the last meeting on Saturday stating it would present a counterproposal to the union but never did. They also said Verizon cancelled bargaining sessions on Saturday night, Sunday morning and afternoon. 

"Verizon employees have been waiting since June 22 for management to bargain at all. Even at contract expiration, Verizon continued to demand $1 billion in concessions per year. That's $20,000 for every worker. That demand is coming from a $100 billion company, where the top five executives got compensation of $258 million over the past four years," the CWA said in a release today. "

We didn't walk away from the bargaining table," William McGowan, the Local 2323's business manager told the Providence Journal. "We were waiting to get back to the bargaining table because . . .we want to get an agreement from them."

Reed said in the long run, the company intends to have a new contract with the workers and "Verizon employees will continue to receive competitive pay and benefit programs."

Verizon said a new contract will need to "reflect today's economic realities in our wireline business" in their release, a signal that the company continues to move away from its traditional landline telephone service. The CWA and IBEW 2323 workers are linemen, call-center workers and repair and billing employees for that service. Verizon is the largest wireless carrier in the United States and has a growing digital television service, FIOS.