The Sierra Club’s ally the Communications Workers of America (CWA) is currently on strike against Verizon and Verizon Wireless (Verizon) in 9 northeast and mid-Atlantic states, including Rhode Island, after contract negotiations broke down. (The other states are MA, NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE, DC and VA). CWA members have been critical allies to the Sierra Club on issues ranging from democracy to trade to climate disruption. Now it is our turn to stand up for them.
While Verizon employees are struggling for fair jobs, communities from Baltimore to Appalachia are struggling to transition to the 21st-century clean energy economy without access to high-speed internet due to Verizon’s neglect. This denial of access to an essential tool of the 21st century economy is a prime example of the links between environmental and economic injustice.
Verizon has been raking in billions of dollars of profits every year, yet they are still trying to outsource good union jobs, transfer technicians away from their homes for months at a time, take away employees’ health benefits and avoid paying federal income tax. At the same time, they are still refusing to expand their FiOS high-speed internet to low-income and communities of color, despite getting tax breaks and subsidies to do so. To make matters worse, Verizon is refusing to sit down and negotiate a fair contract with its employees.
In negotiations over their union contract, Verizon employees are coming together to fight the outsourcing of their union jobs and to make sure that everyone has access to quality service. If Verizon employees lose this round of contract negotiations, other companies will see that they too can get away with shoddy service, offshoring jobs, contracting out work, and poor treatment of their employees.
We must ensure that our friends and neighbors have jobs that sustain their families and bolsters the economy in Rhode Island. For good jobs and a just transition, Sierra Club stands in solidarity with Verizon workers.
[From a press release]
]]>Over the past few weeks, I have ridden by Verizon pickets on a regular basis. Here is what happened one day when the marchers protested around a van with scab labor inside parked behind the central branch of the Providence Public Library.
I began the day at a coffee shop where Jobs With Justice’s Mike Araujo came in with his family. We are neighbors and friendly enough that we had a brief chat where he expressed pleasure at the idea of Sanders supporters marching the picket lines with workers, that the movement was using his candidacy as opposed to the other way around. This expresses something that is important to articulate, the fact that there are no disparate protest efforts, there is one movement. It has a long and interesting history here in Rhode Island where it has been called many names but it has always been one, organic, cohesive striving towards social and economic justice.
From the days when Moses Brown began to agitate for the abolition of slavery and when Thomas Dorr began to do the same for poor workers who wanted voting rights, it has existed in a continuity and been called the suffrage movement, the labor movement, the Old and New Left, the black liberation and civil rights struggles, the feminist movement, LGBTQQI rights, ACT-UP, the anti-globalization, anti-GMO organic food farmer markets, #BlackLivesMatter, the environmental and anti-fracking movement, all these and more are part of a whole.
Araujo often talks about how labor is like the Catholic Church, once you are a worker you are in forever, and while I loathe the tendency to equate politics with religion by default because it fails to say that the movement uses religion, as in the case of the Quakers, Malcolm X, or Liberation Theology, he is correct in more than one way. Like the Catholic Church, the movement also has an existence reaching farther back in time than to the life of Karl Marx or whatever persona can be selected from history because, at its core, it is not an individualist movement, it depends on diversity and multiplicity of the masses and in that sense today was, in my mind, indicative of its vibrancy.
Almost 40,000 Verizon workers went on strike today, more than 1,000 of them work in Rhode Island. Four of them set up a picket line outside of the Verizon store on Ten Rod Road in North Kingstown.
These Verizon employees told me one of their demands is for more high-speed FIOS to be installed in Rhode Island. This would increase work for employees and service for customers. Verizon reported more than $5 billion in profits last year.
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After several months of fruitless negotiations, unionized workers at Verizon have decided to go on strike. Sources indicate that, due to the training of non-union labor over the period of negotiations, this could be a long strike.
- The Verizon, union stand-off and the future of labor
- The Verizon, union standoff and the future of customer service
- The Verizon, union standoff and the future of privacy
IBEW Local 2323 said the following via FaceBook:
After waiting all day for Verizon reach out to the Union in an effort to avoid a work stoppage, they have responded they have nothing for us. Verizon has nothing for your hard work, sacrifice, and dedication to this corporation that off the fruits of your labor have been able to make profits of $1.5 billion dollars over the last 18 months.
Our Unity is our Strength!
Our picket lines will be set up tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m.
We will continue to cover this story as it develops.
We have reported on issues throughout the past year related to the ongoing contract struggle between management at Verizon and the IBEW and CWA. A source familiar with these matters forwarded us this email from their bargaining unit which we quote in full:
Regional Bargaining Report
Friday February 5, 2016
As you know from prior bargaining reports the CWA District 1/IBEW Local 2213 and IBEW New England Regional Committees made a proposal which addressed needs of both the Company and the Union. One of the critical issues for the Company is the cost of healthcare. The Union addressed this in our proposal which would save the Company over $200 million during the term of the contract.
Another critical issue for the Company is workforce flexibility and the Union made a proposal to help the Company reduce the workforce in a way that would not hurt our members.
Two weeks ago the Company rejected the Union’s proposal and gave the Union another unacceptable proposal which did not address any of the Union’s critical needs.
Over the last week there have been more high level discussions where our Union leadership told Verizon executives that since we addressed the Company’s needs, we expect the Company to address our needs.
We went back to the bargaining table yesterday to receive another proposal from Verizon. The Company still has many retrogressive demands on the table and has failed to meet any of the Unions needs.
Earlier today Marc Reed put out another deceptive e mail about the status of bargaining. He stated that the Company has “presented proposals that would provide the Company greater flexibility in managing the work and the work force while recognizing current job security provisions”. What their proposal really means is that the Company will withdraw their Job Security proposal if the Union agrees to all of the following:
- Transfers: Close centers and transfer workers up to 99 miles.
- Force Adjust Plan: Change the way the Company declares surpluses which could be done by Article 8 area or organization (impacting thousands of members)
- Temporary Transfers: Ability to transfer employees anywhere in the footprint (Virginia to Massachusetts).
- Article 8: Destroy the definition of our Article 8 units.
Giving the Company the ability to move you wherever and whenever they want is not how the Union defines Job Security.
In New York, Verizon’s Vice-President Jay Beasley implemented a new process called QAR, where managers are required to sit employees down and question them for hours about their daily activities. We demanded that they stop this practice of intimidation and harassment and told them if they want a new process in the future they must bargain over the issue.
It is clear to your Bargaining Committee that this enormously profitable company- which made $18.3 billion in profits in 2015 and paid its top five executives $44.5 million in 2014- is determined to gut our contract and destroy the working conditions that CWA and IBEW have fought so hard and earned over the last 50 years.
We need every member engaged in this fight. It is more important than ever that we take this fight to a new level.
Ready to STRIKE for a fair contract!!!
As we have said in our previous reporting, this is a major struggle to support. If Verizon were to win this struggle, it would be a massive loss for private-sector unions, as detrimental as the forthcoming Supreme Court case over public sector unions are expected to be. It is extremely important to show support for labor here and stand in solidarity in any way possible.
Verizon worker negotiations with the company have come to a major impasse and a strike now seems imminent, says a source close to the situation who asked not to be identified.
In an email to members, the IBEW said:
“The Business Managers informed us that the company has started the process toward a unilateral imposition of their contract terms,” said the IBEW T6 Mobilization Committee, in an email to all Verizon union employees in New England. “Those terms include the elimination of job security. The company has begun making “last and final” proposals and the situation is urgent.”
As I have written in a previous series of articles, this is a tremendously important struggle that will impact the labor union movement in the private sector as severely as the coming Friedrichs Supreme Court case will affect the public sector. If Verizon is able to impose their will and defeat the union, this would have a ripple effect on the entire job market, threatening the basic coordinates of unionized middle class jobs.
- Verizon workers rally for a fair contract
- The Verizon, union standoff and the future of labor
- The Verizon, union standoff and the future of customer service and copper
- The Verizon, union standoff and the future of privacy
This is going to be a hard and long battle, but the stakes are too high to sit this one out. Simultaneously, the UAW has just recently averted a strike with Fiat Chrysler. United Steel Workers are currently facing a lock-out with Allegheny Technologies Incorporated in New Bedford and other plants across the country. Mayor Elorza continues play a cruel game with the firefighters union while rolling out his corporate charter school agenda to bust the teachers union. United Nurses and Allied Professionals have been engaged in continuing negotiations over a contract with Lifespan Hospital Network.
These are not isolated incidents or random occurrences. Both the Democratic and Republican Party are collaborators in the neoliberal ideological apparatus that intends to destroy the union movement, the middle class, and ultimately the hard-earned gains for the social safety net made during the New Deal and Baby Boom periods. It is impossible to deny that there are still some strong pro-worker figures in the political landscape that reject this ideology, but they are few and far between. With a career-minded politician like Gina Raimondo in power and hungry still for ascension to higher prospects in Washington DC, it is clear that a pillar of American democracy is under attack.
Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.
The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.
The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.
Nearly three hundred workers representing over a dozen different unions, as well as family members, gathered outside the Verizon offices on Washington Street in Providence to rally in support of 900 IBEW 2323 members who are entering their second month of working without a contract. When the contract with Verizon expired on August 1st at midnight, 39,000 IBEW & CWA, from Massachusetts to Virginia, were affected.
Even as Verizon demands cuts in job security, health care and retirement security, and even seeks to eliminate benefits for workers injured on the job or caring for a sick family member, the company “made over $18 billion in profits over the last 18 months–$1 billion per month–and paid its top executives $249 million over the last five years,” according to a press release.
Meanwhile, here in Rhode Island, “many of our neighborhoods are suffering from neglected phone and internet services… Verizon has even refused to build their new high-speed internet lines, FiOS, in low income communities, communities of color, and rural areas, again claiming poverty as the reason they can’t put people to work doing much needed repairs.” Workers see these areas as growth opportunities for Verizon, and are eager to “string the lines.”
- The Verizon, union stand-off and the future of labor
- The Verizon, union standoff and the future of customer service
- The Verizon, union stand-off and the future of privacy
After IBEW workers David Fontaine and Bill Dunn opened the event with “The Star Spangled Banner,’ a steady stream of union officials and one state representative took the stage, promising to support workers in their bid to negotiate a fair contract. Over all their message was simple: Stay strong, organized labor has your back, and we can win this fight.
Below is the video of the speakers.
Dan Musard, IBEW 2323
Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328
RI State Representative Ken Marshall
Chris Buffery, Asst Business Agent, IBEW 2323
Maureen Martin, AFL-CIO
Michael Sabitoni, Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council
Matt Taibi, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 251
Frank Flynn, Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals
Paul MacDonald, Providence Central Labor Council
Michael Daley, IBEW 99
Mike Araujo, RI Jobs With Justice
Steve Murphy, Business Manager, IBEW 2323
Within the past few years, the issue of privacy in telecommunications has become a major controversy. Following the revelations by Edward Snowden and the WikiLeaks organization, the role of the providers in collaboration with the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other law enforcement agencies has become a subject of debate. On August 28, Jenna McLaughlin of The Intercept published a story on the ruling by the US Court of Appeals regarding bulk metadata collection by the government which involved Verizon’s cooperation.
- Part 1: The Verizon, union standoff and the future of labor
- Part 2: The Verizon, union standoff and the future of customer service, copper
My sources revealed to me that union members on the ground level of customer service have been able to access tools that collect metadata in ways that disturb them. There is one tool in particular, called the ‘spy tool’ or the ‘creepy tool’, that could be used in an improper fashion. Approval for its use is to be found in the small print of the Terms of Services agreement under the guise of ‘marketing’. The union does not have an official position on not using this tool, but some union members savvy of privacy ethics refuse to use it.
This tool is one which has the capability to allow the technicians to see how many television set-top boxes are within a residence. In many cases, the installation technician or customers will label the boxes based on the room, meaning therefore the customer service technician can see what someone watches in which rooms. The tool works as an aggregator and creates a profile of the customer, showing hours of television watched, what channels, how long on each channel, and other material. This sort of data collection and profiling is easy to gather and use in fashions that would be extremely dangerous. For example, if a stalker had access to this data, the person would be able to see what room their intended victim spends time in the most, at what hours, and, by understanding whether the person is watching a movie channel or one that is playing music, what level of attention is paid to the program. And in this era of cyber attacks and hacking, it is not a remote possibility that such instances could occur.
Some union members actively oppose using these tools because it causes technicians to ‘cross crafts’, something that leads to weakening of the union bargaining position. However, the obvious concerns over privacy and security are something that the union could address and take up as a cause, which is not without historical precedent.
An interesting example of unions taking up prominent civil liberties issues is the instance of their role in the racism struggles of African Americans. The American Federation of Labor collaborated with the government in the enforcement of segregation in the Gilded Age, leading to the formation of rival unions, such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, both of which saw their ranks grow precisely because of their anti-racism positions. After the Red Scare and the merger of the AFL and the CIO, the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement were able to get key endorsements and support from labor. Indeed, a major backbone of the March on Washington was a large contingent of labor union members. Figures like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had cut their teeth in the labor organization movement of the 1930’s and ’40’s. Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in part because of progressive voices from within the remnants of the New Deal coalition pledged their political support in the 1964 election against Barry Goldwater.
Also in that case, there were both practical results for their union members, ending disparities in the lives of their members, and wider social results, collapsing the Jim Crow system. There are real issues to contend with, going up against the will of the military-police-industrial complex is fraught with major challenges. But after years of being championed by anti-union libertarians like Rand Paul, there would be a great level of support gained by labor if they took up the cause of privacy protection.
This is a fight we all need to be concerned about. In the next term, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that was tailor-made to decimate the Abood decision and revoke the right of unions to collect dues in public-sector workplaces. The Verizon struggle, if lost by the workers, would have the same effect on private-sector unions. If you have any ability, whether it be through money, agitation, or just a FaceBook post, stand in solidarity with Verizon workers. The stakes are too high to sit this one out.
Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.
The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.
The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.