Readying for Tough Bargaining, Members Stoke the Fires at Verizon

Hundreds of workers rallied outside Verizon headquarters in Boston August 5, signaling the beginning of the one year countdown to expiration of the Verizon East contract, covering about 50,000 workers from Massachusetts to Virginia.

“A year before our contracts expire, we’re sending a message to Verizon’s top management that we’ll fight for the preservation of good jobs, quality health care and secure pension benefits in negotiations next year,” said Myles Calvey, business manager of IBEW Local 2222 and chair of the New England telephone workers' bargaining committee.

The rally was only one piece of recent rank and file activity, which has been on the upswing lately among members and local leaders at Verizon.

They also pushed the passage of two resolutions at CWA’s national convention in late July, one of which called on the union to organize Verizon Wireless and another that discouraged members from taking temporary management positions.

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

The need to organize Verizon Wireless and other non-union subsidiaries of Verizon has long been a concern of the union. A neutrality agreement achieved through a 2000 strike at Verizon was promptly ignored by the company, which continued to harass, intimidate, and fire union activists who dared to stand up for their rights on the job.

In the past 10 years the unionization level at Verizon and its subsidiaries has plummeted from 70 percent unionization to less than 30 percent. The landline sector of the business, which remains heavily unionized, is declining fast, while the most profitable side of the business, the wireless division, is almost entirely non-union.

The company is doing well overall: Verizon's second quarter finances showed $9.8 billion in cash flow from operations, up nearly 30 percent from 2009.

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“Organizing the unorganized and bringing them up to decent wages and working conditions is a priority for everybody,” said Don Trementozzi, president of CWA Local 1400 in New England, who introduced the resolution. “Verizon built the wireless network using money from the landline side of the house, which has always been unionized. Now that they’ve got a highly profitable wireless division, management will aggressively interfere to keep the wireless workers non-union.”

Verizon workers, together with AT&T and other telecommunication workers, met at the 2010 Labor Notes conference telecom workers meeting, where they decided to promote the Tear Down the Wall campaign in their unions.

"Tear Down the Wall" is the union’s official campaign to knock over the artificial corporate barrier between the union and non-union sectors of the company, but it hasn’t been very active in recent years. Rank-and-file members and local officers at the Labor Notes meeting discussed the need to make organizing wireless a priority in the 2011 contract negotiations, and how to use the leverage Verizon workers still have while the company builds the new (Fios) fiber network.

Local 1400’s Executive Board passed the resolution, and Trementozzi then took it to convention, where it was modified and passed unanimously. There was no discussion on the floor of launching a nationally coordinated campaign or devoting specific resources, however, so it may be up to locals and districts to push the resolution forward and make it a reality.

Another issue rank-and-file workers brought to the national was the ongoing problem of management using union members to fill temporary management positions. The union can’t stop members from taking temporary management positions, but in the past has actively discouraged members from doing so, particularly prior to contract expiration. During contract negotiations in 2008, many acting managers remained in their temporary supervisory positions until a week or two prior to contract expiration, something that had never happened in the past.

Al Russo, CWA Local 1101 chief steward, raised the problem of acting management to the local’s leadership in New York City. Russo had seven acting managers in his shop alone. The local said its hands were tied. Russo appealed the decision to CWA District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton. Shelton took the issue to the CWA executive board at the convention, which passed a motion mandating that members who take temporary management positions would forfeit their union cards after 30 days of acting as managers.

The specifics of how the new rule will be enforced are still being worked out, but it signals a victory for union members who kept the issue front and center during the past two years.