BREAKING: Verizon Employees on Strike!

[ckaihatsu]

BREAKING: Verizon Employees on Strike!

Jobs With Justice

Dear Chris,

This morning, more than 39,000 people who work at Verizon across the country went on strike. Their contract expired in August, and months and months of effort to find common ground and requests for the telecommunications giant to negotiate reasonably have failed. So now, as a last resort, they’re walking out to hold the line for themselves and those that follow. They're not accepting Verizon’s greed as the final word.

Will you stand with them? Write your message to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam now. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4wA/ni0YAA/t.1wb/jNdmFcisTpeVBupRI55FZA/h1/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3AX-2BCMuP6BK62ckL2BkJglhX4-2FYNqfeQtOlwWeNrV6TrQ8-2F71sBy7kfeIa9qJiejwc3hUwGklwEUahaLOJ9WrhSjj-2FdsD22GKnHV8jUaxc2qM3hH1m1K-2FHaTlUc9ZxcHg-2FSawYXnUTjEvpMrv2WoqK1MXW6UK6OFXhU9AfPigS6tAlAmz8 0mWeqSHbtWyzjj0PooX5-2BNr8uTkahlXF60la5rn35V4PsXHQZcjLmexJzUUJFYtgGvw5J k3y79sGPgyT4k8NtJUzYEwwEyBF46so18C5lO4Vh82MBNx64vY K9DWbtmhyRJ3qx7LhpvO8JZVQ-3D)

Verizon, even in this era of inequality, is insanely profitable. The company raked in $39 billion over the last three years and $1.8 billion in profits each month so far in 2016. And yet Verizon's executives are demanding life-changing concessions, ignoring hundreds of millions of dollars its employees have identified in savings. The company wants to contract out more work, offshore jobs, force technicians to leave their homes and families for two months or more at a time and make the people who make Verizon one of the most successful companies do more with less.

But the working people at Verizon aren’t giving in. They are standing together for a fair return on their work. Will you have their backs? Write to Verizon today! (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4wA/ni0YAA/t.1wb/jNdmFcisTpeVBupRI55FZA/h2/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3AX-2BCMuP6BK62ckL2BkJglhX4-2FYNqfeQtOlwWeNrV6TrQ8-2F71sBy7kfeIa9qJiejwc3hUwGklwEUahaLOJ9WrhSjj-2FdsD22GKnHV8jUaxc2qLd2OUZhYJm0pcQMyRhIjnPtqauqfa0-2Fo3I-2FL2KGCyVtrfQeT3IjVnkIotJxC72F0oPvWE-2FTEt8xMKwcRGJtPnKQtV2Y-2BydRgkckR7jqGsga5oGjyXvqGJt4qAfw3sH-2FVAzBtlT-2FcsvE-2BemPRVzB5XTQZ9wxYfiO1cEg7Cp6wnVLfVw42ERWnoyxVMy0-2B-2FmjzBVqNNe1K4FEuRfp4Sp7HXY-3D)

Going on strike is a big deal to each of these men and women. They're putting their livelihoods on the picket line, sacrificing paychecks and risking being permanently replaced. So why do it? They’re not just protesting concessions that would create hardship for their families and endanger the jobs of new and future hires. They’re striking to make sure customers have quality service in the future. They’re protesting Verizon turning its backs on repairing, maintaining and expanding services in communities that need their networks the most. And if Verizon succeeds in destroying jobs that sustain families, then other corporations will surely follow suit.

The stakes are too important. Don’t allow Verizon's CEO to rewrite the rules in the company’s favor. Send a message to Lowell McAdams NOW. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4wA/ni0YAA/t.1wb/jNdmFcisTpeVBupRI55FZA/h3/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3AX-2BCMuP6BK62ckL2BkJglhX4-2FYNqfeQtOlwWeNrV6TrQ8-2F71sBy7kfeIa9qJiejwc3hUwGklwEUahaLOJ9WrhSjj-2FdsD22GKnHV8jUaxc2qGzdbdnnxcHtONJ7Tb3k4sZ9HZj1tdp x0p3FML-2BCbzLtWzOdIpHr2U8Tyyf7J3OagT-2Bdak2-2B2NUx5LuygznLUyxG9xkJpHZ0KBtoMYibgUQIxzcSo0ym9CNP hhXGyS1s5l9SseZeRwTB8HfPxeqXj5lA1RriwBR8P1s0Z57pxM J7lu6awZgQo9hPYgqUA13Smagf-2FMEMvT50WYCVxUI7M4s-3D)

Verizon's position is clear: make money, no matter the cost to our families, our communities and our country. Which makes our position just as clear: being able to provide for those you love isn’t negotiable. By speaking up for the right of the working people at Verizon to stand together, we can make sure that more of our friends and neighbors have jobs that value our families, bolster our communities and invest in our futures.

Make your voice heard now. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4wA/ni0YAA/t.1wb/jNdmFcisTpeVBupRI55FZA/h4/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3AX-2BCMuP6BK62ckL2BkJglhX4-2FYNqfeQtOlwWeNrV6TrQ8-2F71sBy7kfeIa9qJiejwc3hUwGklwEUahaLOJ9WrhSjj-2FdsD22GKnHV8jUaxc2qKUkby0rGWZKLa4XysbXICkDEGRNx1E dg-2BbOzQFMvFxT8vFFHLgaySdCj-2Bn8ifIYAIM1zA-2BqH6EdsYw0BkL-2FLaHMpDCh9gcVebrw-2FO7txnW6zivtM7dcexnOTTZQp1dylZmXoc87mANuS-2F6WqAmGxKRRI5gT3OYCUX3vBW8DCPErP7Hkf8FnIQlhpKTFpB nNlGa1exDwFu5rRVNOmHWxIQo-3D)

Thanks for your continued support of working people,
Hilary

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[ckaihatsu]

Support 39,000 Striking Verizon Workers


Dear Chris Kaihatsu,

On April 13, 39,000 Verizon workers from Maine to Virginia went on strike. Their contract expired in August, but months of trying to get the telecommunications giant to negotiate reasonably have failed.

Verizon has already moved 5,000 jobs overseas and is pressing to send even more jobs to Mexico, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The company raked in $39 billion in profits in last three years and $1.8 billion each month so far this year, but is pushing to outsource work to low-wage contractors.

Verizon wants to relocate jobs on a moment’s notice – forcing technicians to leave their homes for months at a time and separating families.

The telecommunications giant is demanding that retirees on a fixed income pay much more for health benefits.

Here’s what you can do to help:

Find an event and join them on the picket line: StandUpToVerizon.com

Watch their new video to hear the stories of Verizon workers ready to strike. http://bit.ly/1SLQ7y0

Click here (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4QA/ni0YAA/t.1wb/O7k4jQKTRu-nZoIvBXbI-w/h2/v542M3eB2ETEUbTj2GSuOZMo3JQsprGqyEKahcnuCm4nQzYoMj NCW3A5PzgzUOWjyNsCF-2B4pp6Vx-2BGOsj03Zg9KAzfq3-2FtjnL-2BGF12SoK40-2FEumGCC1bl5nBy7rKog2F85WR4UOUfXCPcsn-2BBNxGew7QKd7-2BdPxHRMiovtsy9JZJdVHersnoMSxn-2BuQUsMZhDNywGDZodE4yukAH7YY1KuZ0Td7NBx3AwI0gYU2GP Bz6p6NPFkuJlcV9iea5RsFHOJHsd7DgE3cyR6TbwEXPGO3bPMM Kj0ahApusBIxbHhafDbLZoY6BuZhtHwtpo6a1FRtpbrcOqcQCw RRnwYNctHvI3LF1k23t92iPSmv0pctuU1QgqCS0yquaYIAQzCn egb8sl2xN6Cc87AJ3aPb-2Fl5076f1Ih-2BoC9-2F8FJN6GqhS2QxukQq3zDHEU3lDAnlBvmnZn3fcnLD9CZQr10y 36oohMLbP6HFXEaou3XeWwLcvpuHi32mfxKnwVkphOUUWvewHy D7-2BN2a92XrozSkOOK-2BspVw3N6hsHghXIDJnpPUd07Fy-2BDHydhQDoed-2BSX3Ldw8wtEeEAdJL9C3APFvH4-2BS1tJaU5Gp6U8QmeupNhorBTMlQVfcc-2BQkLPCIR5FhIlODu4eRJGwPURHvxcWSCwSqYf9SyEGOlhBpcF zwvhe5m6LDpvVvQhnRgDJS4AdEYlp5MHoUaDyO3NZNHMuDcKsf tZ0FSVc1u7C5Ryx7DdEDbxyLZ6t347eS-2BYglO1F-2BhD1bLSq4xvCa6rClxNGqboiH-2BfGNm1xcVNxAmylXv7ujeZfvZKGIjhRZnTi22XYeOYcGgHjZ7 oLnBG8XeayZe90aF9RqUx1fK82hiRg3C9SRRpEgv99RMoOiDi8 Xi55PaSJM5zPuMRRQHTWm2lAOAfSaO9AKyf5RYO3-2FLlnV6OEopYeDujrRlB2Dp0eeYdSCFz) to read the latest press release from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) with key strike locations.

In Solidarity,
Mark Dimondstein
President
American Postal Workers Union


1300 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 | www.apwu.org

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[blake 3:17]

Standing up to Verizon's war on unionsApril 13, 2016
Unions representing nearly 40,000 Verizon workers have announced plans to hit the picket lines on April 13, in what would be one of the largest strikes in the U.S. in recent years. The workers, members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), are fighting aggressive attacks on their compensation, job security and more--carried out by a corporation that is raking in the profits, but won't be satisfied until it breaks the power of their unions.
Danny Katch talked to a CWA shop steward from New York City about what's at stake in this battle and why Verizon workers deserve solidarity.

https://socialistworker.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/330/images/Verizon%20picket%20inside%20pen-b.jpgCommunications workers picket against Verizon in New York (Peter Lamphere | SW)
WHAT ARE the main issues in this contract fight?
THERE ARE a lot of issues that we've been bargaining concessions over the past several contracts. Verizon is attacking our medical, our pensions, disability, overtime--all of our compensation is under attack.
What's different about this contract is that they're attempting to destroy Article 8, which protects our right to show up to work in the same place, every day, a reasonable distance from where we live.
They're pushing to change transfer rights to favor the company to the point that they will be able to transfer us anywhere in the company footprint for up two months at a time, during which we'd live in hotels away from our families and communities.
There's also been an erosion of call center work and an increase in contracting out, and this contract would allow for closing more call centers and transferring members up to 80 miles from their current job sites, as well as opening the door to increased international outsourcing.
IS JOB security also a major issue?
WE CURRENTLY have two tiers of job security. For people hired before 2003, we have essentially ironclad job security. People retire of their own volition or take an incentivized buyout. For people hired after 2003, it's much easier to be laid off, which we've seen in New York City, where it's very hard to find anybody working on the technical side with less than 15 years on the job.
For this contract, they'd like to eliminate job security across the board, no matter how long you've been in the company.
VERIZON HAS made $39 billion in profits over the last three years. They don't seem to need concessions in order to survive. What do you think are the company's goals with these contract demands?
THEY'RE TRYING to streamline their operations. They're transforming the company to be more oriented on Wireless, and they'd like the wireline side to be more flexible and modeled more on the workplace culture of Wireless, which is still overwhelmingly non-union.
The issue with the transfers is that as the company replaces the 100-year-old copper-based network with the fiber-optic network that carries their FIOS product, they need short-term, high-intensity workforces to build the network, and then move on to the next build.
So their vision is a migrant workforce that follows the work from state to state. Obviously, this model favors younger workers who are not tied down and have much lower expectations for how they should be treated within the company.
THE CONTRACT expired last August. Why have things come to a head now?
I THINK it's become clear now that the company has drawn a line in the sand, and they're not going to shift without a major action on our part. They've essentially stuck to their proposals since August, and even though the union volunteered $200 million in concessions in the late winter, the company wasn't interested at all.
The company made noises that this was its last best offer on medical and other major issues, and in a situation where the union and the company can't agree to terms on specific articles, the company has the power to impose its version of the settlement.
So the stakes are very high. If the union accepts this horrible transfer concession, it's going to spell the death of the union. Too many of us are older and have established families and roots in our communities to pick up and leave for two months at a time. This is a make-or-break issue for the union.
THE CWA is the biggest union to endorse Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the strike will be happening while the Democratic candidates are competing in the New York primary. Is that a coincidence?
THE UNION is looking to use the Sanders campaign to highlight everything that's wrong with Verizon. Verizon maps perfectly with everything that Bernie's campaign has said about the 1 Percent and Wall Street's greed and transferring wealth and control from workers to bosses. So this is a real boon for the union that the class anger that's boiled for years under the surface is being exposed and validated by the Sanders campaign.
This is a critical week because of the New York primary, and the union will be participating in various Sanders events. CWA President Chris Shelton will be introducing Bernie at a rally on Wednesday in NYC, and numerous local rallies will be happening around the primary to build a connection that this is bigger than Verizon.
But winning at Verizon would be a good first step in the kind of political revolution people want to see Sanders bring.
WHAT DO you think it will take for the union to win a strike?
I THINK it's a scary prospect to be on strike right now. This can be a protracted and brutal strike. I think the union will have to look very strategically at how we're building community support, which it's already begun to do around issues of the digital divide.
There are glaring holes in the FIOS network that has replicated the lack of access that predominantly Black and immigrant low-income neighborhoods already suffer from.
But the heart of this strike has to be militant participation by the union membership. Because the company is so focused on finishing FIOS builds in high-density, high-income areas like Manhattan, stopping scab operations should be the forefront of the union strategy.
WHY SHOULD people support Verizon workers, and what can they do to help?
LIKE I said before, Verizon could be the poster child of corporate greed. It's not just about money, it's about companies that pay no taxes getting to dictate your life outside of work as well--that you won't get to see your families for two months. They want to change the overtime rules so that you have a seven-day workweek and never get two days off in a row.
Then there's the issue of high-speed Internet access--it's ridiculous that anybody lacks high-speed Internet in their home in the wealthiest country in the world.
People can support us by showing up to picket lines and rallies, by stopping automatic bill pay [if they have a Verizon account] and wearing buttons in support of the union--and by organizing a union in their own workplace!

https://socialistworker.org/2016/04/13/standing-up-to-verizons-war-on-unions

[pastradamus]

My god. Im just reading the above post. Talk about a a bunch of fascists.

[ckaihatsu]

Labor-Community Unity Needed to Win Verizon Strike

If ever there was a company wallowing in multi-billions in profits whose insatiable greed wants to take even more from its workforce, its name is Verizon. Consider the outrageous demands this company made to better enrich its stockholders:

- Huge cuts in retirement security;

- Cuts in benefits to workers injured on the job;

- Increase in workers' health-care costs;

- Elimination of job security;

- Technicians to work away from home for a period of months;

- Unrestricted freedom to subcontract work abroad.

So Verizon got the strike it wanted, after not negotiating in good faith for over 8 months, while simultaneously training 10,000 replacements for the workers they knew would strike.

In 2011, workers struck Verizon. As labor journalist Lee Sustar noted at the time, "The strike quickly became a major confrontation. Within 48 hours, lively picket lines were harassing scabs at garages and offices, with striking technicians following Verizon trucks to set up mobile pickets.

"Meanwhile, union members and supporters began picketing and leafleting at non-union Verizon Wireless stores, and labor and community activists around the U.S. followed their example in a solidarity campaign that recalled the support for last winter's labor mobilization in Wisconsin .…" Many local groups "adopted" a local retail outlet for their focus.

The current strike was also called by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). More than 36,000 workers walked off the job, compared to the 45,000 who did so during the 2011 strike. But workers then returned to work without a new contract. Subsequently there was an agreement of sorts which expired in August of 2015. Since the company insisted that its harsh demands remained on the table, the workers finally said enough was enough and hit the bricks on April 13.

The company is trying to assure the public that its services will be retained with minimum disruption. That's because it is the wireline sector of its business that is most affected, not the wireless sector, where it gets nearly all of its revenue.

This mammoth telecom giant made $9.6 billion in profits last year and $39 billion over the last three years. In the first three months of this year, it chalked up "earnings" of $1.8 billion.

We urge a united stand in solidarity of all union members and working people, together with community supporters. so that our brothers and sisters can help break the relentless drive to make all working people serfs.

We also urge demonstrations, mass picketing, forums, town meetings, distribution of educational leaflets, and other forms of struggle to galvanize masses to defeat this blatant union busting.

The national AFL-CIO, whose statement follows, has set a militant tone for this struggle, a recognition that the future of the labor movement is at stake in this showdown fight.


AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO Statement Dated April 13, 2016

This morning, working people at Verizon went on strike. It’s never good when working families have to take this step, but Verizon workers felt they had no choice.

They’re fighting to create a better workplace for themselves and those who come after them. They aren’t going to give up until Verizon ends its push to send jobs overseas, stops intimidating Verizon Wireless workers trying to create a better future for themselves and their families, and drops its demands to cut retirement benefits, gut job security and make workers move away from their homes and families for months at a time just to keep their jobs.

Click here to immediately sign and share our petition to tell Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, "Enough is enough. Settle a fair contract with working people at Verizon and Verizon Wireless now."

These demands from Verizon executives are absurd. Verizon workers helped the company make $39 billion in profits over the last three years—and $1.8 billion a month in profits over the first three months of 2016. But that’s not enough for Verizon.

The company’s greed knows no bounds. While the company continues to demand working people give back more and more, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam made $18 million last year. That’s more than 200 times the compensation of the average Verizon employee!

It’s time for Verizon to acknowledge that working families also have a right to do well in America. It’s time for a contract that’s fair to Verizon’s working people and the customers they serve.

Click here to immediately sign and share our petition telling Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam you’ve got the back of striking workers and want him to settle a fair contract now.

In Solidarity,

Christian
------------------
Christian Sweeney
Deputy Director of Organizing, AFL-CIO

************************************************** ****************

We in the Labor Figtback Network believe that this is a moment to draw a line in the sand and pull out all the stops to ensure a crucial victory over our corporate enemies. Such a victory is long overdue! The key to making it happen is forging unity between a united labor movement and community groups.

Issued by the Labor Fightback Network. For more information, please call
973-975-9704 or email [email protected] or write Labor Fightback Network, P.O. Box 187, Flanders, NJ 07836 or visit our website at laborfightback.org. Facebook link : https://www.facebook.com/laborfightback

Donations to help fund the Labor Fightback Network based on its program of solidarity and labor-community unity are necessary for our work to continue and will be much appreciated. Please make checks payable to Labor Fightback Network and mail to the above P.O. Box or you can make a contribution online. Thanks

[ckaihatsu]

Take the Pledge: I Won't Cross the Picket Line

https://s3.amazonaws.com/affiliate.actionnetwork.files/user_neilcwa/standuptoverizon_email-header.png

Chris,

"This fight is bigger than Verizon. Most of us have families and we really don't want to be out of work but we have to fight together."
- KC Tucker, Verizon Wireless Worker from Brooklyn, NY

KC and 40,000 of her coworkers are still on strike, fighting for their future against corporate greed at Verizon and Verizon Wireless. They are walking in picket lines outside of work locations, including Verizon Wireless stores. Will you stand with them and sign the pledge promising not to cross the picket line? (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4gA/ni0YAA/t.1wp/7LpjkqqcSIKERGd_xLyOqw/h1/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3ABWp1n2fdiZc7gJqm8FfdaxGCvqkmtr8xT3C ugYSjIN5xSg1AMQePcWgW-2Bszi2UBowpXch6Hd4W2BWRnwec-2FsH-2BAUMSyAMX2-2FvSO8eJtCBkPV49nUEe2wqMC-2BrlbCyIJBh14BT351O-2FGO5neaime7MyBHfZyTUXWvk0V2ofAJYZdyZ7cBNC-2F-2FKGaVd5oVfr0dJJ3vv-2FdkbyXO27GXemQuGU0hACRxDEodWtnsFGsIftUMwcf2L3-2BhjR8pEaeVfXLE7jENGfn6jdYECvMFRBTsRjmWC2SERUWnUmS W4Ab4P-2F-2FLUKy7o-2FdB98hVPE1RlrZ2QaAr3vqsnRSvCWJpNaEFWXnR5-2FpJujz4y8uMc5zJEAQ-3D-3D)

Empty stores will send a powerful message to Verizon and other large corporations that enough is enough.
In our new video, KC explains just what's at stake in this strike. Click here to watch the video and let KC and the other men and women on strike know you won't cross their picket lines. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4gA/ni0YAA/t.1wp/7LpjkqqcSIKERGd_xLyOqw/h2/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3ABWp1n2fdiZc7gJqm8FfdaxGCvqkmtr8xT3C ugYSjIN5xSg1AMQePcWgW-2Bszi2UBr0IQLLepVLPqtbF7SS-2BFXkTZLlUbVomYo-2BB4piew4P88mlrjSayzeRkqJ-2BWhJn7H9e4tjEfFXKpffjvUJitZgo9Y4VW7KWzmukdj0uYOjd 5Q1pahqQK75ytTdIdHSuhtIc5uC7XungZ8JKmK8gMiQ494G8Ry 6wDS6hYx3ecnU7CIUaztn4gxPYV75Nno8qIgN88g7SuQcbxY4i 8SCbhPg-2BZ5p1L01AApG7PQ2yJrrfd9a-2FULlK83BMRKB1C-2BNuZ70I-2Bs-2F4sh1pSWZpNuGSZqYSgt8Bv4GzyHniD-2Bw1UoLXiA-3D-3D)

https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/data/000/035/380/original/Sign_the_pledge_-_2.png

All working people deserve to make a good living and have a good life.

This strike is about doing whatever it takes to make sure the needs of working families in our country are met, instead of just standing by as a handful of individuals get richer and richer. It's about keeping good jobs in our communities, instead of forcing working people to relocate or sending the jobs overseas.

Sign the pledge to stand up to corporate greed and let the men and women on strike know that you stand with them. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/4gA/ni0YAA/t.1wp/7LpjkqqcSIKERGd_xLyOqw/h4/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBV0Frf8aO-2BhheoIczpshG3ABWp1n2fdiZc7gJqm8FfdaxGCvqkmtr8xT3C ugYSjIN5xSg1AMQePcWgW-2Bszi2UBqvQ57PCoWOP2Iw0mEFW1VH8gZfYxVOiuy-2BtsABFebMIfROSzM6zIpTSPYW1JnA0B4bp6NlFaQ-2BPuZxKrAd-2BeeGlmC6vmUiCiXwPgNtpKcR8uhs8qriEr0r-2ByJdRtrCn5aM2treZBDh8EGxxPEFkE9Cz9K36otzWe3gLobTA YR5o6zx1ojk9HW6j5uPt3ewmzlbDXoB8Uzjx7bsR9YYCMhQe9A K9omfo2czuFEcQz6Bn00RdKUhyrclytMV04YCAM2ADeJxRuMR3 K64ueHC2hKl-2BCymmYWpd-2BlINTTXDMWeAA-3D-3D)

In Solidarity,
Beth Allen
Director of Digital Communications
Communications Workers of America

Stand Up to Verizon
standuptoverizon.com

Facebook

Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC.
501 3rd Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001
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[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/04/20/veri-a20.html

World Socialist Web Site
wsws.org

Verizon workers confront strikebreaking operation
By Jerry White
20 April 2016

With the strike by 39,000 Verizon workers reaching its one-week mark today, tensions are rising over the intransigence of the telecom company, which is demanding sweeping health and pension concessions, the further outsourcing of jobs and the power to transfer existing workers long distances for weeks or months at time in order to cut labor costs.

Last year, the company reduced its payroll by 1,000 workers through buyouts, and it is determined to transform its workforce into low-paid on-call laborers with few if any benefits. Meanwhile, the company, which is number 15 on the Fortune 500 list of America’s most profitable companies, spent $4.4 billion to acquire AOL and paid out billions in dividends to its wealthiest investors and top executives.

It is clear that the company was determined to provoke a strike. It has spent months training some 20,000 managers and contractors to maintain operations during the walkout. The decision by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) to force workers to continue on the job after the contract expiration last August gave Verizon an extra eight months to plan the strikebreaking operation.

The company refuses to negotiate and is calling for the CWA to accept federal mediation by the Obama administration. In 2011, the CWA called off a strike after two weeks and then accepted a mediator’s ruling in 2012 that imposed first-ever out-of-pocket health care costs on workers.

Large numbers of workers are expected today for a mass picket at the company’s Chesapeake center in the Washington, DC suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland. Verizon has transferred call center, engineering and sales managers from throughout the country to the facility to coordinate the company’s continuing operations.

Verizon mailed an April 15 letter to all strikers from Karyn Stetz, the vice president of human resources, who informed workers that “all union-represented employees have the legal right to work during the strike if they so choose.” She added, “We respect the personal choice each individual must make in this situation.”

Workers are determined to fight, but the actions of the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have repeatedly undermined the battle. From the very beginning, the unions, which offered $200 million in concessions, have blocked any real mobilization of workers. Last week the CWA ordered 9,400 AT&T West workers in California and other states to continue working without a contract, thereby preventing a joint strike by telecom workers on both coasts.

The unions have instead subordinated the strike to the political maneuvers of various Democratic politicians, from presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to New York Senator Charles Schumer and Governor Andrew Cuomo.

While downplaying workers’ concerns over health and pensions concessions, the unions have centered their agitation on the demand that Verizon expand its FiOS fiber optic system. This would expand the dues-paying base of the CWA, which no doubt would offer the “necessary” concessions to Verizon to secure this work.

The union has also criticized the company for outsourcing call center jobs to Mexico and the Philippines, echoing the economic nationalism of the United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers. Hostile to any struggle to unite workers against the global telecom giants, the unions use anti-foreigner agitation to conceal their collaboration in the cost-cutting of the US-based transnationals.

Far from being “friends” of the workers, the Democrats have spearheaded the deregulation of the telecommunications industry and provided billions in subsidies to Verizon, AT&T and other companies. In addition, the Obama administration has worked with corporate America to shift the cost of health care and pensions onto the backs of workers.

If Verizon workers were to rebel against the stranglehold of the unions and spread the struggle to other sections of workers, New York’s Andrew Cuomo, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf, Virginia’s Terry McAuliffe and other Democratic governors would not hesitate to use state violence and mass arrests against strikers.

As the strike continues, economic pressures will increase on workers, many of whom had saved up for a strike in August but exhausted their savings as the unions kept them at work. The CWA has told workers in New York, where 13,900, or more than one-third of the strikers live—to apply for unemployment benefits, which provide a weekly maximum of $420.

According to a strike web site, “The CWA Members Relief Fund provides payment of $200 per week per striker beginning on the 15th day of a strike, increasing to $300 week on the 29th day of a strike, and increasing to $400 on the 57th day of a strike.” The site also informed strikers that Verizon would cut them off medical benefits by the end of the month, and that the CWA Defense Fund would only pay out benefits in “extreme cases” and only after a “pre-approval” process from the union. The site added, “Vision and dental payments will not be paid from the Members Defense Fund.”

Whatever its rhetoric about “solidarity,” the CWA is preparing to starve strikers into submission. As one striking worker told the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter, CWA President Chris Shelton and other union bureaucrats “have long used the defense fund as their slush fund.”

According to the Biennial Report of the Defense Fund Oversight Committee, in April 2013 delegates to the CWA Convention approved the diversion of $12,622,500 from the defense funds to a new “Growth Fund,” to “support and enhance the union’s movement building, organizing, leadership development, research, industry analysis and efforts to achieve economic justice, including the hiring of staff needed to provide resources for launching new and sustaining existing efforts.”

This money was one-half of the earnings from the Robert Lilja Members’ Relief Fund (RLMRF), which had a balance as of March 31, 2014 of $459,417,000. “Total investment earnings during the 2012 calendar year were $25,245,000. According to the rules, one-half of these earnings, or $12,622,500 was moved to the Growth Fund.”

According to reports filed with the US Labor Department, the CWA had $1.7 billion in marketable securities and disbursed $268,020,412 in staff salaries and other expenses.

If the struggle of Verizon workers is not to be defeated like the 2011 strike and countless other battles betrayed by the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win labor federations, everything depends on the independent initiative of rank-and-file workers themselves. The Socialist Equality Party and the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter urge workers to elect rank-and-file strike committees that are democratically controlled by workers themselves and free from the authority of every faction of the CWA and IBEW bureaucracies and both big business political parties.

Verizon workers should fight for the mobilization of the broadest sections of the working class—telecom, auto and steel workers, teachers and other public sector workers, high school and college students and other sections of workers—to come to their defense. This should be the beginning of a common industrial and political counteroffensive against the government-backed corporate onslaught on the working class.

Peggy, a retired Verizon worker from Bronx, New York, wrote to the Newsletter, saying, “This strike affects us as much as those that are walking the picket lines. I went through many strikes while I worked there and it was not easy. I feel for the 36,000 that are walking. However, there is no way this should be ‘settled’ the way the union wants—the workers deserve more, and Verizon can pay it. Shame on you, Verizon—we built you—from New York Tel to NYNEX to Bell Atlantic to Verizon. How can you treat us this way?”

Dan, a striker with 12 years’ service from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, told the Newsletter, “For us, jobs are the most important thing. The company wants to move us anywhere without any kind of notice. They want to be able to say that you have to go to New York, DC or Boston for two months at a time. Then when you get back they could send you somewhere else. They are treating us like we are just casual labor. We have families. I already miss out on a lot of my kids’ games and school stuff because of the hours we work. We can’t just get up and leave home. If the company needs more help in some area, they need to hire people there not force people to move.

“Verizon has been doing this a long time. They are making billions, but they want to make more and they figure with the job market the way it is, we should be willing to take anything. But if they push us back on this, they will never give it back. It is not only Verizon. Every company is cutting its employees. Health care and pensions, nobody gets those anymore. Everything in the country is benefiting the rich. The politicians don’t care about us.”

Another Pittsburgh striker, Eric, added, “Management knew this was coming. They have been harassing us, writing people up for every little thing. They had a quota they had to meet. It didn’t matter whether you did something wrong or not, but each supervisor had to have so many write-ups each month. This is happening to everyone. Workers everywhere need to stand up.”

On the picket line in downtown Brooklyn, Maria, a central office technician with 20 years’ experience, told the Newsletter, “Things we fought for many years ago are all being taken from us now. Something as simple as seeing a doctor has become very difficult. They’re trying to take wages from us. They don’t want to pay overtime for working on Sundays. I work the night shift, which we used to get paid an extra ‘night differential’ for, and now they don’t want to pay that anymore. I feel like we’re going back 40 years, where there was no union and the worker was nobody.”

Asked about the CWA betrayal of the 2011 strike, Maria said, “For me that was unforgivable. After that I felt the union didn’t really represent me. The last contract they just didn’t do their job and I felt that they bargained at the top for themselves and weren’t thinking of us at all. But I’m out here again because we need to come out and fight for ourselves, for the working people and to make our voices heard. The people at the top are all making the big bucks and they want to push us down and down.”

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/10/vzsc-m10.html


Verizon striker run down as New York cops protect scabs

By Sandy English
10 May 2016

On Monday afternoon, a van carrying strikebreakers hit a Verizon worker picketing in front of City View Inn on Greenpoint Ave. in Long Island City, a neighborhood in New York City’s borough of Queens. Emergency Medical Technicians arrived at the scene and took the striker to a hospital. As of this writing, the worker’s condition is unknown.

http://www.wsws.org/asset/610e7627-5bd6-46f0-ba8c-ee09d0222d6A/verizon-injury.jpg?rendition=image480
Strikers posted this picture of injured worker being taken away after being struck by van

According to comments posted by strikers on social media, the van was driven by a uniformed member of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Strikers were taking part in a protest organized by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at hotels where strikebreakers are quartered, when police opened up a path for the van as it sped through the police barricade and struck a parked car with a striker inside.

One eyewitness reported, “As the caravan of police driven scab mobiles left, one van hit a parked car and a CWA 1109 member. The officer driving the van did not stop and took off.” Verizon workers are outraged at the scab herding by the NYPD. Some have demanded to know why the officer drove the wrong way down a one-way street or if he was arrested for injuring the striker.

The scabs were reportedly employed by a contractor used by Verizon in the state of Kentucky, according to strikers. A video of the aftermath of the incident showed angry strikers confronting the cops. One worker who identified himself as a former marine, told the police “they had no right to use their authority” to attack striking workers.

The police violence is a damning indictment of the Democratic Party and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who oversee the strikebreaking operations of the NYPD and have herded strikers into pens surrounded by metal police barricades in the same manner that protesters against war and inequality have been corralled for years in New York City.

The fact is the Democratic Party is providing Verizon with an army of NYPD police to escort scabs, spy on workers and to prepare, if the struggle were to break free from the control of the CWA, even greater police violence and mass arrests. This exposes the fraudulence of the supposed support for Verizon workers from Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who held photo-ops with strikers during last month’s New York primaries.

It also underscores the anti-working class character of the union’s alliance with the Democratic Party, which no less than the Republicans serves the interest of giant corporations like Verizon.

http://www.wsws.org/asset/acbc14f0-34b8-44f0-8de2-cb2c1ca92f2D/verizon-bulletin.jpg?rendition=image240
Bulletin newspaper, the forerunner of the World Socialist Web Site, reports the 1989 murder of NYNEX striker Edward “Gerry” Horgan

The incident in Long Island City is a chilling reminder of the August 14, 1989 murder of Edward “Gerry” Horgan, who was run down by a scab during the four-month strike against NYNEX. The 34-year-old father of two died of head injuries after a car, driven by the daughter of a manager, drove through the picket line in Westchester County, New York at high speed. The CWA and the AFL-CIO never campaigned for the perpetrator to be prosecuted and no charges were ever brought.

Verizon, a massive global telecommunications corporation with tens of billions of dollars in assets, provoked the strike by demanding concessions in health care from workers and retirees, the right to transfer workers up to 100 miles away from their current job locations, and the right to force them to work at any location the company chooses for up to two months.

With the first month of the strike nearing completion, the world’s second-largest telecom company is escalating its effort to force workers to accept these conditions. The company prepared for the strike for months and has trained over 20,000 managers and contractors to do the work of the strikers.

The strike has been systematically isolated by the CWA, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and other unions, which are in the process of wearing workers down with impotent protests while blocking any genuine mobilization of the massive and discontented working class on the East Coast of the United States. The unions have already offered hundreds of millions in concessions.

Under a back-to-work agreement signed by the CWA after it sold out the 2011 strike, workers are severely restricted in their ability to defend their jobs from scabs and even to express their opinions. The memorandum with Verizon signed by the CWA allows workers on a picket line to be fired for “hate speech” directed at scabs.

The supposed “progressive Democrat” Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Police Commissioner William Bratton, who has defended NYPD spying and the militarization of the force with armored vehicles and sound cannons. The Democratic-controlled City Council voted last year to arm and fund 1,000 police officers, 300 of whom would belong to a heavily armed “antiterrorism” unit that Bratton said would be used against protesters. During the 2011 strike, such units were used against Verizon strikers after the company accused them of “sabotage.”

The escalation of the government-backed attack on Verizon workers must be answered by mobilizing the widest possible support from workers and young people facing the same struggles throughout New York. This can be done only if rank-and-file workers elect their own strike committees, independent of the CWA and other unions, and in opposition to the big-business Democratic Party.

Sign up for the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter

The WSWS urges Verizon workers and supporters to sign up for the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter for frequent updates and to leave your comments or questions. To do so, click here.

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/17/pers-m17.html


The political struggle facing Verizon workers

17 May 2016

The month-long strike by 40,000 workers at Verizon Communications in the United States is at a critical juncture. Over the weekend, the Obama administration intervened in an effort to wind down the strike and impose the dictates of the telecommunications giant. After meeting with US Labor Secretary Thomas Perez Sunday, executives from the company and the unions are set to resume talks on Tuesday.

Verizon is determined to slash thousands of jobs, shift the cost of health care and pensions onto the backs of the workers, and reduce the workforce to the status of casual labor.

The Verizon strike is part of a resurgence of militant working-class resistance to the relentless attacks of the corporations and the government on jobs, wages and living standards across the United States and internationally. It follows last year’s strike by US oil workers and the mass opposition of auto workers against the sell-out contracts imposed by the United Auto Workers union and the Big Three auto makers. It coincides with job actions and protests by teachers and students in Detroit and demonstrations by working-class victims of lead poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan.

In Greece, workers are carrying out mass strikes against brutal austerity measures imposed by the fake-left Syriza government; in France, workers and students are mobilizing against social cuts and reactionary labor “reform” laws; workers’ strikes and protests are spreading in China and India.

All sections of the working class and youth are under attack, whether in the form of layoffs and contract concessions or the shutoff of utilities and imposition of crushing levels of student debt. What all these attacks have in common is the fact that their source is the bankruptcy and failure of capitalism.

This is what makes them political struggles and demands that they be brought together, uniting all workers, native-born and immigrant, young and old in a single mass counteroffensive against the corporate elite and all of its political parties and representatives.

The intervention of the Obama administration underscores the fact that the strikers are locked in a political struggle against not only a single company, but against the entire class of corporate owners and the capitalist state. The Labor Department meeting follows last week’s intervention by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the courts, which backed Verizon’s request to ban picketing at New York-area hotels where the company is housing strikebreakers.

The picketing ban was granted shortly after a New York City cop, driving a vanload of scabs, rammed through a picket line, running down and injuring a striking worker. The incident highlighted the strikebreaking operation by the New York Police Department (NYPD) under the direction of the Democratic Party mayor, Bill de Blasio.

The unions are part of this unholy alliance against the Verizon workers. As in every previous struggle—oil workers, steel workers, teachers—they are working deliberately to isolate, demoralize and defeat the workers and help the company impose its demands. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) do nothing to fight company strike-breaking, work to starve the strikers into submission by doling out completely inadequate strike pay, and promote the Democratic Party, one of the two parties of big business, even as it organizes police attacks and works to suppress the struggle.

The unions have kept work stoppages at the lowest level of any two-term president since the Labor Department began keeping records in 1947. This has allowed the Obama administration to oversee the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression, while nearly all income gains since the fraudulent “recovery” began in 2009 have gone to the top one percent of the population.

The surest sign that the unions are preparing to sell out the strike is the CWA’s calling in of the police to drive World Socialist Web Site reporters from the picket line. As thousands of strikers know, the WSWS is the only publication that has told the truth about the strike, given expression to the views of the workers, and fought for a strategy to mobilize the broadest sections of workers behind the strike.

That is because the WSWS is the genuine voice of revolutionary socialism—as opposed to the phony socialism of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The unions promote Sanders and hail his token, one-time appearance on the picket line—to drum up votes on the eve of the New York primary—because they know he supports the bureaucrats, not the rank and file workers. Above all, they support Sanders’ economic nationalism, which serves to pit US workers against their fellow workers in Mexico, the Philippines and China, and line them up behind “their” American bosses.

While the forces arrayed against them are powerful, the allies waiting to be mobilized behind the Verizon workers—the masses of workers in the US and internationally—are more powerful. As the candidate of the Socialist Equality Party for US president, I urge rank-and-file Verizon workers to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the unions and fight for the broadest possible mobilization of the working class.

The SEP proposes that Verizon workers set up rank-and-file committees of struggle independent of the unions and the Democratic Party to unite auto workers, teachers, young people, the unemployed and retired workers behind the strike. Organize mass demonstrations! Mobilize the entire working class!

“Every class struggle is a political struggle,” declared the founder of scientific socialism, Karl Marx. What was true then is true today.

It is necessary to develop a mass political movement based on a socialist and internationalist program to put a halt to inequality, poverty and war by putting an end to their source—the capitalist system.

Jerry White—SEP candidate for US president

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/02/pers-j02.html


Lessons of the Verizon strike

2 June 2016

Nearly 40,000 workers at Verizon Telecommunications returned to their jobs late Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, ending one of the largest and longest strikes in the US in recent years.

The circumstances surrounding the calling off of the strike were particularly despicable. After 10 days of secret talks overseen by Obama’s labor department, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) announced that they had reached an “agreement in principle” over the Memorial Day weekend (when workers were off the picket lines) and were ending the seven-week strike. The unions ordered workers back to work without releasing the full contract—since there was not one—or allowing workers to vote on it.

Union bureaucrats shouted, “We got everything we wanted!” at highly skeptical workers showing up for work Wednesday morning. In an effort to exploit their advantage, Verizon management sought to make an example of militant workers wearing strike t-shirts by sending them home for not wearing “proper attire.” A CWA business agent in midtown Manhattan immediately took management’s side.

In reality, the wholesale capitulation of the unions gave Verizon, in the words of top executives, all the “key changes sought by the company” to boost its competitiveness and profits.

The deal will shift hundreds of millions of dollars in health care costs onto the backs of active and retired workers. It will also give the world’s second largest telecommunications company a free hand to streamline operations by consolidating customer service call centers and prepare the spinoff of its less profitable wire telephone, internet and cable TV unit, which has already seen mass job cuts in recent years.

The struggle at Verizon is far from over. As the consequences of this betrayal become apparent, opposition will grow as voting on whatever actual contract emerges takes place before June 17. Moreover, the struggle of telecom workers is part of the growing resistance of the working class and radicalization of workers and youth throughout the US and internationally, from last fall’s rebellion of autoworkers against the UAW sellout deals, to the spreading waves of strikes and mass protests in France and Belgium against anti-working class labor “reforms.”

This makes all the more necessary a careful evaluation of the vital lessons, not only for Verizon workers, but for the working class as a whole.

First, it is necessary to place the struggle at Verizon within the context of the overall strategy of the ruling class and its political representatives, Democrat and Republican. In response to the economic collapse of 2008, the Obama administration oversaw the funneling of trillions of dollars into the banks to prop up the financial system and the wealth of the corporate and financial elite. This has been followed by a coordinated effort to reduce the wages, health care and other benefits of the working class.

The tocsin for the attack on wages was sounded with the 2009 restructuring of the auto industry, overseen by the White House, which was based on the halving of wages for new hires and a significant lowering of health care costs for current workers and retirees. This was followed by the passage of Obamacare in 2010, fraudulently packaged as a “reform,” the essential purpose of which was to shift the costs from corporations and the government onto the backs of workers.

The consequence of these policies can be seen in the record growth of social inequality since 2009, with 95 percent of all income gains going to the top 1 percent. Yet this restructuring of class relations is far from over. Under conditions of growing opposition in the working class, and signs of a renewed economic crisis on the horizon, the ruling class is pressing ahead.

While the CWA was promoting Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the anti-working class character of the Democratic Party was shown by Obama’s National Labor Relations Board, which filed for and received strikebreaking injunctions, and the role of the New York City Police Department overseen by New York’s supposedly progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio. The conspiracy between the unions and the Obama administration culminated in the US Labor Department “talks” which hatched the forced return to work.

Second, it is necessary to understand clearly the role of the unions, which are not “working class organizations,” but arms of corporate management and the state, controlled by affluent upper middle class executives whose interests are hostile to those of the workers they claim to represent.

One recent episode is particularly telling. In July 2015 CWA President Chris Shelton went to the White House along with the leaders of the United Steelworkers, the United Auto Workers and other unions for a discussion with President Obama. At the time, various media outlets and government think tanks were warning of a “wages push” by American workers anxious to reverse the decline in real wages after the full recovery of corporate profits, the stock market and CEO pay after the Great Recession. It is clear that the White House meeting discussed how to contain this danger with some 5 million workers coming up for new contracts in 2015-16.

What followed was the systematic sabotage by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations of any united struggle by workers against Obama’s economic policy. The chief reason the CWA did not call Verizon workers out on strike when their contract expired in August 2015 was because this coincided with the expiration of contracts for 30,000 steelworkers, 140,000 autoworkers and others. Through a combination of extended contracts, lies and intimidation, the unions separated these workers and imposed deals that held total labor cost increases to below the rate of inflation.

When the CWA finally called a walkout eight months later, Verizon workers had exhausted their savings for a strike and the company had hired and trained a small army of strikebreakers.

Despite this, Verizon workers fought a determined battle, defying violence by strikebreakers and police, court injunctions and a blackout by the corporate-controlled media. But the organizations that claimed to represent them, the CWA and IBEW, conspired to isolate the strike and starve workers into submission. In order to prevent a telecommunications strike on both coasts, the CWA forced 16,000 AT&T West workers continue working without a contract and quickly shut down a local strike in San Diego before it spread throughout California.

As the Verizon strike has demonstrated, workers are in a struggle not only against a particularly ruthless corporation, Verizon, but a whole class of capitalist owners and the political system that defends them. These struggles are increasingly taking the form of a clash between rank-and-file workers and the official trade unions.

In the US, the support for Sanders—a self-described “democratic socialist”—exposes the lie that American workers and youth will never seek a political alternative to the capitalist system. While the American ruling class has nothing to fear from Sanders, who has sought to contain popular anger within the safe channels of the Democratic Party, the corporate and financial oligarchy has a great deal to fear from the reemergence of class conflict and the growing anti-capitalist sentiment among workers and youth.

In the course of the strike, as in previous struggles by autoworkers, teachers and other sections of workers, Verizon workers increasingly turned to the World Socialist Web Site and its WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter to learn the truth, express their concerns and demands, and for a strategy to expand their struggle. Thousands of workers have circulated the newsletter and hundreds have participated in online conferences and supported a petition to demand the rescinding of the back-to-work order pending the release of the full contract and a democratic vote by the membership.

In every workplace workers need new organizations of struggle and self-representation. Rank-and-file committees, elected by and democratically controlled by the workers themselves, should be built to unify workers, establish lines of communication between different industries and public sectors, and organize a common fight back in defense of wages, health care and other social rights.

The Socialist Equality Party is fighting to build a new revolutionary leadership to mobilize the working class in a political struggle against the big business parties and the capitalist system, which is the cause of social inequality, poverty and war.

Jerry White

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Editorial: Verizon Strike Points the Way Forward (May-June 2016 Issue)

The Organizer

[Note: Following is the editorial reprinted from the May-June 2016 issue of The Organizer newspaper. Attached are the cover of the new issue as well as the cover of the Unity & Independence supplement (plus a statement in opposition to the coup government in Brazil). To subscribe to The Organizer, please contact us at <[email protected]>. For a sample copy, please send us your snail mail address. To subscribe / unsubscribe from this listserv, please contact us at this email address.]

* * * * * * * * * *

VERIZON STRIKE POINTS THE WAY FORWARD!

By ALAN BENJAMIN
As we go to press, the 39,000 Verizon workers who had been out on strike for nearly two months returned to work after a tentative agreement was reached between the company and the two striking unions: CWA and IBEW.

The company provoked the strike when it announced its plans to shut down U.S. call centers, outsource work to low-wage locations abroad, drastically expand its ability to send employees far from home on assignment, and make deep cuts to workers' healthcare benefits. After a militant strike -- with mass picketlines, marches and rallies from Massachusetts to Virginia -- the company caved on the main points. The workers' gains include the following:

* 1,300 new East Coast call-center jobs,
* the reversal of other outsourcing initiatives and creation of new technician jobs,
* a 10.9% wage increase over four years,
* a pension increase, and a first contract for Verizon Wireless store employees in various cities.

While the workers did not get everything they demanded (some language remains that allows the company to pare down its workforce in coming years), their fighting resolve, and the mass outpouring of support from other unions and from community organizations, made it clear that when workers and their unions stand up and fight, they can push back the corporate juggernaut -- and score some important gains.

Upswing in Class Struggle

Such a strike and such a victory are very rare these days, especially in an election year, when the union officials tend to pull the plug on any form of class struggle to focus solely on electing their "friends" in the Democratic Party. But this year, the class struggle has been on an upswing.

In Chicago, on April 1, the Chicago teachers and their union, CTU, staged a one-day strike, with massive support from parents and students, to protest the city's projected cuts and privatizing efforts. CTU President Karen Lewis recalled the massive teachers' strike in 2012 that pushed back the city's proposals to dismantle public schools, and she vowed that the teachers would go back out in a protracted strike if their demands were not met.

On April 8, faculty in the California State University (CSU) system -- who had called for a five-day strike beginning April 13 -- learned that the CSU administrators had agreed at the last minute to heed their demand for a wage increase. The union, California Faculty Association, won this victory as it had prepared a massive strike with the near-unanimous support of the teachers.

On April 14, tens of thousands of unionists and activists took to the streets across the United States to demand $15 and a union. In many cities this demand was coupled with the call for affordable, quality housing for all.

Meanwhile, Black activists and their supporters nationwide continue in the streets to demand an end to the police violence that primarily targets Black youth. Their demand for Black community control and the overhaul of the police departments is gaining new adherents by the day. [See article on pages 3-5.]

On April 27, the faculty, students and staff at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) staged a a one-day strike -- the first such strike in decades -- to demand a long-overdue wage increase and an immediate halt to the massive budget cuts proposed by the administration. Unions throughout San Francisco supported the strike. [See article on pages 2 and 9.]

Break with Wall Street!

This is the context in which one of the most unpredictable primary seasons in U.S. history is coming to a close.

As we write these lines, the Republican Party is in deep crisis, with many longtime party leaders announcing they will not attend the July convention in Cleveland to protest Trump's nomination. On the Democratic Party side, there is also turmoil, as Bernie Sanders keeps closing the gap with Hillary Clinton, to the dismay of party leaders who are urging Sanders to step down and announce his long-promised support for Clinton, lest Sanders deepen a schism that could lead his millions of supporters to refuse to back Clinton in November. And then there's Clinton's email scandal.

What is crystal clear is that working people are fed up with their deteriorating living and working conditions -- and they are expressing this outrage in protest actions in the streets and in the electoral arena. Sanders, in particular, has given voice to this anger with his calls to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street, establish Single Payer healthcare, stop the TTP, cancel student debt, encourage trade union organization, and increase the minimum wage to $15 and hour, among other points.

But the simple truth is that you cannot break with Wall Street without breaking with the twin parties of Wall Street: the Democrats and Republicans. And this Sanders has refused to do. His candidacy has given an electoral voice to the disgruntled and disenfranchised, but it's one that remains wedded firmly to the over-arching goal -- which is both misdirected and futile -- of reforming the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is and always will be the graveyard of all social movements.

The Green Party Is NOT an Alternative

Many supporters of Bernie Sanders are saying that if Sanders loses the Democratic Party nomination, which is still the most likely scenario, they will vote for the Green Party and its presidential candidate, Jill Stein, on the grounds that the Greens are an "independent" third party.

But the Green Party is not an alternative. A multi-class "progressive" party cannot substitute for the mass political action of the working class and oppressed themselves. What is needed is a party with a clear class base, one that is rooted in the trade unions, first and foremost, and with a clear class program.

The Greens are inherently incapable of posing a real alternative to the two-party system because they have an inside-outside approach to the Democratic Party and because they do not rely on the organizations and struggles of workers and the oppressed.

For Independent, Working Class Politics!

"Never in living memory has there been a greater, more urgent need for a Labor Party," stated the editorialists of Kansas City Labor. "We can't depend on duplicitous 'friends' or crusading heroes. We have to rely on ourselves -- those who labor by brain and muscle. That's why in addition to supporting effort like the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare, and $15 Now, we favor a revival of Labor Party Advocates."

We agree. The $64,000 question is how do we get there from here?

The Labor For Bernie campaign represents five national unions, two state AFL-CIO federations, 90 local unions and more than 25,000 unionists, all of whom defied the top leaders of the AFL-CIO and SEIU to endorse Sanders. On April 1, it held a national conference in Chicago that drew labor officials from all the unions endorsing Sanders. One of its discussions revolved around the question: What to do next?

The conclusion reached by the gathering was that a network was needed to continue the momentum generated by Sanders -- his "Political Revolution" -- in the labor movement. It also agreed that such a network, like the Labor for Bernie campaign itself, had to remain inside the Democratic Party, though some voices called for an "inside-outside" approach.

Herein lies the problem: Even if Sanders were to win the party's nomination, which is highly unlikely, and even if he were to win the presidency, which is not totally inconceivable, "his one-man crusade," as the editorial in Kansas City Labor put it, "will not be able to win the reforms that inspired his followers. The President can propose but has limited powers to decree. Only Congress can pass laws, and Bernie's Political Revolution will not get much support on either side of the aisle on Capitol Hill."

But the most likely scenario at this writing is that Hillary Clinton, with her huge Wall Street funding, will win the Democratic Party nomination and the presidency. "If it's Hillary Clinton," Kansas City Labor continued, "the Political Revolution ends in Philadelphia in July. We'll be back to the same old, same old 'lesser evil.'"

Such an inside, or even "inside-outside," strategy in relation to the Democratic Party is a dead end. Once again, workers' aspirations will be derailed and betrayed.

But this does not have to happen. Shouldn't the unions that formed Labor for Bernie seize the moment, break with the Democratic Party, and convene a national conference for independent labor-community politics? Isn't this what the situation calls for so that the millions of people who have placed their hopes in Sanders are not "burned" yet again.

Such a conference could promote building united-front mass actions around single-payer healthcare; free public education through college; a $15 minimum wage and a union; no to TPP and the "free trade" agenda; stop all deportations, papers for all; stop privatizations, deregulation, and union-busting; affordable, quality housing for all; an end to U.S. wars and interventions abroad; support for Black Lives Matter and the fight against police brutality, and more.

It could also promote the struggle to run labor-community candidates at all levels to champion these and other pressing demands. There is fresh and fertile ground for such an effort. A new generation has become politicized.

The 2016 election has shown that voters are sick and tired of "establishment politics" and are open to independent alternatives. Labor-community candidates could act as a bridge to an independent mass workers' party, a Labor Party, based on the unions and the organizations of the oppressed communities.
2 Attachments

[John Nada]

Friday, May 13, 2016

NEW YORK — Over the course of a four-day visit to the Philippines this week, four representatives of Communications Workers of America who are on strike discovered that the extent to which Verizon is offshoring work is far beyond what has previously been reported and what the company publicly has claimed. Verizon is offshoring customer service calls to numerous call centers in the Philippines, where workers are paid just $1.78 an hour and forced to work overtime without compensation. Terrified that the public might find out about what has happened to the good middle-class jobs the company has shipped overseas, Verizon sent private armed security forces after peaceful CWA representatives and called in a SWAT team armed with automatic weapons.

“Executives repeatedly have claimed that Verizon offshores few jobs, and none that affect our members. Recently, our union was contacted by call center workers in the Philippines who revealed that Verizon was lying to our members and the public about the extent of the off-shoring of good American jobs, so we sent four CWA members to the Philippines to learn the truth,” said CWA President Chris Shelton. “When our members uncovered how Verizon is padding its incredible profit margins by replacing good paying American jobs with poverty-wage jobs abroad, Verizon sent armed guards and a SWAT team after them.”

CWA President Shelton continued: “Worse, Verizon has doubled down on its deception, claiming workers were on a ‘vacation.’ Let’s be clear: being on strike, exposing Verizon’s lies about off-shoring and being harassed by Verizon armed security guards is no vacation. Striking men and women from Massachusetts to Virginia are standing up for their families, their customers and to save middle class jobs for all Americans.”

Appearing on a picket line in Syracuse on April 14th, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam claimed that only a small part of the business’ calls were sent to call centers in the Philippines. But CWA’s delegation this week uncovered call centers in the Philippines staffed with workers during U.S. daytime hours taking every imaginable type of customer service call related to the company’s wireline services. At one call center, the depth of Verizon’s greed was exposed when the CWA delegation discovered that the offshore workers are paid just $1.78 an hour to answer calls from frustrated customers based in the U.S.

And despite Verizon’s protestation that the strike is not affecting service, it has forced call center workers in the Philippines to work overtime hours since 40,000 highly trained U.S. employees went on strike, including about 13,000 US call center workers. Call center workers said they were forced to commit to 1-2 hours of overtime 5 days a week, plus a full 8-hour 6th day of overtime. Verizon’s subcontractors do not pay workers additional overtime compensation for these hours.

“Verizon is terrified that the public might find out about what has happened to the good middle-class jobs the company has shipped to the Philippines. The truth is that Verizon is destroying middle-class American jobs so that it can pay workers $1.78 per hour and force them to work around the clock, rather than preserve good jobs in our communities. That’s what our strike is about. Instead of profiting off of poverty abroad, Verizon should come back to the table and negotiate a fair contract that protects middle-class jobs,” said Dennis Trainor, President of CWA District One.

One of Verizon’s key demands in the strike is the ability to close several call centers based on the East Coast, which are staffed by union members who earn a living wage with decent benefits. The company also wants to reduce the percentage of call center work that must be handled within the state that it originates from, another ploy that enables it to shift work to low-wage, non-union domestic contractors, or to Filipino or Mexican call centers.

“Talking about poverty pay does not warrant a response from armed guards, but it seems Verizon is going to great lengths to try to hide their strategy of outsourcing middle-class American jobs in favor of poverty wages abroad,” said CWA District 2-13 Vice President Edward Mooney.

When confronted about these issues at their corporate headquarters in the Philippines on Wednesday, May 11, Verizon officials refused to speak to the representatives. Presumably, it is difficult to justify paying workers $1.78 an hour when the company’s CEO made $18 million last year, and the company has piled up $1.5 billion a month in profits for the past 15 months. When the CWA delegation left peacefully, Verizon had their armed private security team pull over the departing van on a public street. The Verizon security team then called in a SWAT team, who surrounded the car, bearing automatic weapons. One police officer with his face covered in a balaclava pounded on the van window with his automatic rifle, demanding that the labor representatives leave the vehicle.

The union representatives, including CWA staff, a representative of UNI (global labor federation) and representatives of KMU (a Filipino union), were allowed to leave without further issue, as they had done nothing illegal and the police had no cause to detain them. Source: http://www.cwa-union.org/news/releases/cwa-uncovers-massive-verizon-offshoring-operation-in-philippines Couple weeks old, but I thought that was nice international solidarity. Need more of that in the discussion on offshoring, the conditions of the workers that "took" the jobs.

[ckaihatsu]

Verizon workers defeat worst of bosses’ demands after 44-day strike

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/cwajpg.jpg

By David Hoskins

Washington, DC - Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers returned to work on June 1, just days after a tentative agreement between the company and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) unions brought their 44-day strike to an end.

The strike was one of the largest and longest in recent U.S. history, impacting 11 states in the northeast and south. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 47,000 workers walked off the job in 12 major work stoppages for all of 2015. And this was actually higher than 2014, when just 34,000 workers walked off the job in major strikes tracked by the BLS across the U.S.

The rank-and-file CWA and IBEW members showed courageous determination in striking for more than six weeks to fight back against Verizon management’s concessionary demands. The workers’ last contract expired in August and their healthcare coverage was cut at the end of April.

The militancy displayed by Verizon workers beat back the worst of the bosses’ demands. Union leaders have declared the tentative contract a victory. Ultimately, workers belonging to both unions must vote up or down in the coming weeks on approving the contract deal before it can legally go into effect.

New contract deal brings many wins for workers, makes some concessions to Verizon

Competing reports in the capitalist press, such as the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine, and statements issued by the unions representing Verizon workers, paint a somewhat mixed picture of the tentative contract that is up for a vote by workers. One thing that is clear is that the new contract includes a lot of victories for workers and some concessions to Verizon management.

Attempts by management to force pension cuts and reductions in accident and disability benefits and eliminate layoff protections for certain classes of employees were successfully defeated by striking Verizon workers. The tentative deal between the union and Verizon management includes raises of almost 11% over four years, up from the 6.5% Verizon had originally offered, and the addition of 1300 new union jobs at call centers. Verizon retreated on some of its proposals to outsource work. Instead of the proposed pension cuts, Verizon workers will now receive a slight increase in pension benefits.

The agreement also provides an opening for the unions to organize low-wage wireless retail workers at the company’s 1700 retail sites by securing a contract for approximately 70 unionized workers at several Verizon stores in New York City and Massachusetts. The workers at these stores have been working without their first contract since joining CWA in 2014. Approximately 100 wireless technicians also won a contract. These provisions represent real wins for Verizon workers and illustrate the power that the working class has in withholding its labor.

However, the tentative contract represents a partial victory since concessions were made to some of the demands made by company bosses. Verizon secured new limits on retiree health benefits. The unions also agreed to take on hundreds of millions of dollars more in healthcare costs during the life of the contract and workers will now pay higher premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. Additionally, the company won more flexibility to route customer calls to centers around the U.S. and offer workers buyout options once a year to leave, without prior approval of the union. This could prove an important tool for the company to reduce the workforce over the life of the upcoming contract.

The increased premiums and out-of-pocket expenses come just a few years after the unions made historic concessions in the 2011-12 contract fight, including forcing workers to pay a share of health insurance premiums for the first time. The fact that Verizon came back harder and tried to take more after the 2011-12 concessions is an important lesson. The bosses’ appetite for concessions is insatiable. The more you undermine standards, security, and pay for workers by feeding concessions to management, the more concessions management will demand in the future.

These concessions to Verizon bosses come even though the company is incredibly profitable. Verizon’s own financial reporting shows that the company made $17.9 billion in net annual profit in 2015, up from $9.6 billion in 2014. First quarter 2016 Verizon net profits came in at more than $4.3 billion. Verizon has used this extraordinary profit to pay its CEO 200 times more than the average Verizon worker and provide the company’s top five executives with $233 million in compensation over the last five years, according to CWA.

Despite the concessions made to management, the Verizon workers’ partial victory, including the defeat of many of the most egregious takebacks proposed by Verizon management, would not have been possible without the strength and militancy displayed by Verizon workers by striking for an extended period of time.

Capitalist state intervention shows that the bosses fear worker militancy

In mid-May, U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez brought the company and unions back to the bargaining table so that he could use the authority of his office to intervene in the contract discussions. Perez recently issued a statement on the tentative agreement between Verizon and the unions, saying in part, “Today, I am pleased to announce that the parties have reached an agreement in principle on a four-year contract, resolving the open issues in the ongoing labor dispute between Verizon’s workers, unions, and management…This tentative resolution is a testament to the power of collective bargaining.”

Perez, who is sometimes mentioned as a potential vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party ticket this fall, is careful to give lip service to the power of collective bargaining. However, strengthening collective bargaining is not the reason that the capitalist state intervened in the negotiations between Verizon and the unions. The motivating factor for the state’s intervention rests with the last line of the Labor Secretary’s statement, which simply states, “I expect that workers will be back on the job next week.”

The fact is that the Verizon strike saw a massive work stoppage pushed by tens of thousands of rank-and-file union members at a multi-billion-dollar company that services more than 112 million wireless connections and 7 million internet subscribers. Scab replacement workers hired by Verizon were doing a poor job of delivering service, and the Labor Secretary’s intervention was primarily intended to stop the strike from disrupting parts of the U.S. capitalist economy.

By intervening, both Verizon and the state recognized the power of rank-and-file workers engaged in militant action and acknowledged that strike activity can disrupt the establishment economic order, especially if it spreads across employers or industries. There are indications that the idea of militant strike activity, inspired in part by the visible Verizon workers’ strike, is gaining traction among the broader working class.

For example, thousands of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 members working at Kroger grocery stores in the Roanoke Valley area of Virginia voted to authorize a strike on May 18. That strike ultimately did not occur after the company invited the union back to the negotiating table and made some movement to further increase wages following the strike authorization vote.

It is important to note that many rank-and-file trade unionists are often ahead of their union leadership on taking militant strike action. The decision on whether and how long to strike is often shaped by a section of union leaders who are quick to collaborate with the boss and cut a deal before workers have exerted their full leverage in stopping production. This can often shorten the length of strikes in a way that is detrimental to worker demands or stop strikes in their tracks before they even get off the ground.

Still, the Kroger strike vote in Virginia shows that just the threat of a strike can sometimes be enough to bring the boss back to the table and extract some level of concessions, however minor. And the Verizon strike, despite some of the concessions contained in the tentative contract, demonstrates that prolonged and militant strike action is the path forward for the working class in this country to exercise its full power, extract real concessions from the company and eventually put the boss back on the defensive. Workers in this country need more strikes, not fewer.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/09/veri-j09.html


As voting continues, CWA officials pressure Verizon workers to accept sellout

By Nick Barrickman
9 June 2016

After their first week back on the job, Verizon workers are facing concerted pressure from management, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) to vote “yes” on the sellout contract proposal that served as the basis for ending their nearly seven-week strike. Voting is currently underway at union locals until June 20.

In an effort to sell the rotten offer to a deeply suspicious workforce, union officials have been invited by the company to address workers personally. “[Union] Bureaucrats were out to [our] work location yesterday. They were irrational in their exuberance towards this great ‘victory,’” a New York Verizon worker told the WSWS.

The worker added that union officials “were very defensive when asked any questions. Most questions they avoided answering. A few people started asking tough questions and were shouted down before they could even [finish] asking.

“A lot [of] people feel uneasy about the way they are hyping this [proposal]. There is something really fishy about the behavior of the bureaucrats. Their behavior borders on the unhinged in the way they are calling this thing a victory, which indicates there is a major sell out in the works,” the worker continued. Union officials have reportedly resorted to distributing news articles published by the International Socialist Organization, Salon magazine, Labor Notes and other pseudo-left groups promoting the union’s so-called “victory.”

Though voting on the new offer has been underway for over a week, workers have not been shown a finalized version of the offer. This is because a contract likely doesn’t exist. Instead, workers are being urged to vote for a tentative “agreement in principle” which consists of a ten-page bullet point list and a Memorandum of Agreement between the company and union that is subject to change at any time.

The “agreement in principle” served as the basis for ending a nearly seven-week strike by 39,000 East Coast telecom employees just days before unemployment benefits were to kick in for New York workers, a much-needed financial respite for workers trying to get by on a paltry $400 weekly strike pay by the CWA. The proposed offer—a product of talks that were overseen by the US Department of Labor and the Obama administration—would facilitate the elimination of higher-paid workers and impose significant increases in healthcare costs across the board.

Behind the CWA and IBEW’s push to ram through the “agreement in principle” is a fear that a militant and aroused workforce may break free from the suffocating grasp of the Democratic Party and pro-capitalist trade unions.

An AT&T worker in California informed the WSWS that as of Wednesday four West Coast CWA locals had called “grievance” strikes, with two more set to go out on Thursday. In May, the CWA, facing pressure from its rank and file in the midst of the Verizon strike, was forced to call out a limited “grievance” strike over a local issue in San Diego. The CWA quickly shut down the strike in order to continue the isolation of the Verizon workers and prevent a unified movement of telecom workers on both coasts.

“I was informed by an associate that on the district-wide phone call between the leadership and the locals nothing was said about mobilization, only instructing various local leaders where they could go to get first aid assistance,” the worker told this reporter. If true, the CWA is not announcing the locations of the strikes because it is fearful that a mobilization of telecom workers will endanger its collusion with the telecom giants.

The real character of the CWA-Verizon agreement was spelled out on the industry news site Fierce Telecom. The telecom news site quoted global investment firm Jefferies, which stated that Verizon’s expected second-quarter revenue losses were due not to the supposed concessions made by the company during bargaining, but were attributable to “reduced demand and a focus on repair and maintenance during the strike,” which Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo stated would be offset once the company got out of “catch-up mode.”

This outlook was echoed by Wells Fargo senior analyst Jennifer Fritzsche, who gloated “While there likely will be some impact on Q2 financials related to the strike...the savings that should result from this Strike outweigh the near term distractions, in our view… We would expect more quantitative details related to these savings to come from the company when it reports Q2 2016 earnings (late July) if not sooner.”

Chief in Verizon’s projected “savings” include plans to spin off less profitable sections of its wireline business while harassing and coercing older, higher-paid workers into taking an early retirement. Speaking from the 2016 Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2016 Telecom and Media Conference earlier this week, CFO Fran Shammo announced that Verizon would make plans to sell off nearly 50 data centers “over the next three months” for a profit of $2.5 billion.

In addition, Shammo announced that Verizon’s plans to spend nearly $3 billion to acquire the online web browsing and digital media service giant Yahoo! will go forward, as the telecom seeks to position itself as a digital provider.

The “agreement in principle” is being modeled on Verizon’s decision to sell off portions of its wire service to communications firms Fairpoint in 2008 and Frontier in 2014, the latter deal netting the company over $10 billion. In the aftermath of both deals, workers formerly employed at Verizon were forced to take massive concessions, which were agreed to by the unions. In return for their service in selling out the Verizon strike, the CWA/IBEW unions will obtain the addition of nearly 1,400 wire and 65 wireless workers with significantly lower benefits who will provide the unions with a further source of dues income.

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/23/veri-j23.html


“We were out on strike for 50 days for nothing.”

Verizon executives gloat in wake of ratification of CWA contract sellout

By Shannon Jones

23 June 2016

The announced ratification this week of the sellout contract between the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Verizon Communications has been taken as the occasion for celebrations by company management and union officials.

The ratification of the concessionary deals does not mark a show of confidence in the CWA and IBEW. Rather, it signifies that workers saw no way forward to pursue their struggle based on the bankrupt strategy of the unions.

The agreements provide a derisory 10.9 percent pay increase over four years and impose hundreds of millions of dollars in additional health care costs on the backs of workers. The seven-week strike by some 40,000 Verizon workers was systematically sabotaged and isolated by the CWA and IBEW. The deal followed decades of concessionary contracts imposed by the CWA and the IBEW that have contained major attacks on the jobs and living standards of Verizon workers and more broadly telecommunications workers nationally.

http://www.wsws.org/asset/806dbf93-9d79-49e1-8576-0248a039458J/Verizon+march+A+resized16-04-18.jpeg?rendition=image480
Verizon strikers in New York City

The contract settlements were announced just before the Memorial Day holiday after 10 days of secret talks with Obama’s labor secretary and a federal mediator. The CWA and IBEW abruptly called for an end to picketing and shut down the strike without providing more than sketchy highlights of the purported “agreement in principle.”

Nonetheless the unions and a host of pseudo left groups immediately claimed that workers had won an enormous victory.

Now that the contract votes have been completed, management has not been able to contain its expressions of satisfaction. In a statement following the ratification vote Verizon chief administrative officer Marc Reed declared, “We are pleased that our employees ratified these new agreements…The company’s key objectives for this round of bargaining were in the areas of health care, post retirement costs and workforce flexibility. These agreements achieve all of those objectives. The company will realize cost savings and cost avoidance through healthcare plan changes, increased healthcare contributions, Medicare Advantage plans for our retirees, maintaining limits on post-retirement healthcare costs and freezing the mortality table for lump sum pensions using the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) rate.”

Reed continued, “In addition, the agreements allow for greater flexibility in call sharing to better service customers, and give us the ability to offer special buyout incentives to associates.”

This gloating statement by a high level Verizon official exposes as lies all the talk by the CWA and IBEW of workers gaining an historic victory. It confirms the assessment of the World Socialist Web Site Verizon Strike Newsletter that the deal was a sellout, tailored to the needs of management.

The entire conduct of the strike belies the claim that workers achieved important gains. From the start the strategy of the CWA and IBEW was based on putting minimum pressure on management and imposing maximum hardship on workers.

In July 2015, CWA President Chris Shelton and other leaders of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions held a White House conference with President Obama (see photo). The meeting was to discuss the expiration of labor agreements of more than 5 million workers in 2015-16 and how to prevent a unified struggle of workers who were demanding the restoration of lost wages and benefits after the recovery of corporate profits after the 2008 crash.

http://www.wsws.org/asset/52dedb5a-5634-4675-bca4-258334d2886G/04_Chris_Shelton_White_House.jpg?rendition=image48 0
CWA President Chris Shelton, first on left, and other labor officials meet with President Obama in July 2015

The CWA and the IBEW refused to call a strike at Verizon when the contract expired the next month, in August 2015, despite the fact that workers had built up their savings in preparations for a fight and that tens of thousands of steelworkers and autoworkers also faced contract deadlines. The delay gave Verizon management time to prepare and train strikebreakers and separated the Verizon workers from powerful sections of workers in basic industry.

In mid-April, after eight months of delay, the unions called a strike without advance notice to workers, who were largely taken by surprise. The company, however, immediately put its strikebreaking plans into effect, using management personnel and scabs to maintain its operations.

The unions did nothing to counter the company’s strikebreaking. They did not seek to mobilize broader support for the strike among city workers, transit workers and other sections of telecom workers in the major metropolitan centers on the East Coast. In California and Nevada the CWA instructed 16,000 AT&T West workers to continue on the job after their contract expired in April. When a strike broke out in San Diego, the CWA quickly shut it down before it could trigger similar walkouts statewide.

The unions’ entire strategy was based on subordinating workers to the Democratic Party and the CWA’s endorsed then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to boost his electoral chances and provide the CWA with a “left” cover for its betrayal of the strike. For his part, Democratic New York Mayor Bill de Blasio penned strikers behind metal barricades while mobilizing hundreds of cops to escort strikebreakers across CWA picket lines.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration intervened in a multi-pronged attack. The National Labor Relations Board sought and obtained an injunction barring picketing of hotels housing strikebreakers. Meanwhile, US Labor Secretary Thomas Perez stepped in to convene closed-door talks in Washington, DC to shut down the strike before it became the catalyst for a broader movement of the working class.

All this time workers were being slowly starved as the union doled out strike checks of $200-$300 per week at a time that the CWA alone controlled assets of some $500 million.

The union executives were also anxious to shut down the strike because of the growing influence of the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter, which was followed by and gave a political strategy to thousands of strikers each day.

The outcome of this process could be nothing but a sellout, as the words of Marc Reed confirmed. In addition to huge healthcare and retirement savings, the agreements will facilitate management’s plans to consolidate and downsize its call center operations. It will also accelerate the process of ridding the company of older, better-paid workers and replacing them with lower-paid new hires that have few benefits or job protections.

Meanwhile, workers at AT&T West are still without a contract. Talks are reported to be continuing with management demanding a host of regressive changes, including a 5 percent wage increase over four years, freezing of pensions, reduced paid time off and increased “cost-sharing” on health benefits.

A Verizon worker from Pennsylvania who wished to remain anonymous said that Marc Reeds’ comments on the contract increased his anger. “Why didn’t we see a full contract before we voted? Why did the union call us back to work? The union needed to stay out until we had a written contract.

“The CWA is selling us out. I don’t agree with what happened one bit.”

Another Verizon worker from New Jersey said, “The union told us we won’t go back with concessions and we are giving up cuts in health care while the company is making record profits.

“At our local contract ratification meetings people were raising questions about working conditions—the Saturday schedule is being ramped up for example—and the union said they were too busy to deal with it. But, people are upset about their treatment. I feel we were out on strike for 50 days for nothing.

“In the 2011 strike we violated our own bylaws when the union sent us back to work without a contract.”

He said that since the end of the current strike management had increased its harassment. “The minute we came back to work they started in again with the same thing. I got a call from my manager that they are going to start reviewing production and asking, ‘Why did you take so long on the job?’”

Referring to the political impasse presented by the two corporate-controlled parties, the Verizon worker said, “We definitely need a party that is for the workers.”

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