Verizon workers issue strike threat for Wednesday

More than 39,000 Verizon employees from Massachusetts to Virginia plan to strike at 6 a.m. Wednesday, the union leaders said Monday.

"Unless this company reconsiders its shameful demands . . . our members will be on strike," said Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents 29,000 of the workers.

Verizon executives, meanwhile, said they want to keep talking but have been training thousands of nonunion Verizon employees for a year to take over union functions if there is a strike.

The looming clash comes as Verizon is moving away from its legacy "wired" business, which employs many of the union workers, and is continuing to grow its mobile phone and high-speed Internet franchises, albeit more slowly than in past years.

A successor company to telephone giant Ma Bell, Verizon received just 29 percent of its revenue from "wired" businesses in 2015.

Cellphones aren't likely to be affected by a strike, although Internet use could be, as could calls for service or installations.

"We've tried to work with union leaders to reach a deal," Marc Reed, Verizon's chief administrative officer, said in a statement.

"Verizon has been moving the bargaining process forward, but now union leaders would rather make strike threats than constructively engage at the bargaining table."

The employees have been working without a contract since Aug. 1, 2015, and had authorized a strike in July.

Union leaders said they expect to meet with company officials on Tuesday. They last met for negotiations on Thursday.

"No worker ever wants to go on strike. It's always the last resort," said IBEW president Lonnie R. Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents 10,000 workers, many in New Jersey.

"Verizon . . . has given us no other option," he said.

About 5,900 employees represented by the CWA would be affected in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

The unions are chiefly worried about their jobs being outsourced. In Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, 680 call-center jobs are threatened, said Edward Mooney, CWA vice president of that region.

Both sides have been running advertisements to build public support.

In a regional television and digital campaign funded by the CWA, a Verizon retiree describes Verizon as the "poster child for corporate greed." Another describes how communities are affected when jobs leave.

Verizon's advertisements, published in newspapers, defend the company's management practices and compensation.

The unions accuse the company of dragging its feet on promises to build out its high-speed FiOS network and say it is increasingly using nonemployee technicians to repair facilities.

The unions also say the company is insisting on its right to transfer workers in the Massachusetts-to-Virginia region away from their home bases for up to two months at a time unless the unions agree to "ratify a concessionary agreement" by May 20.

Source: Philly.com