USW Stands in Solidarity with Striking Workers at Verizon

USW Stands in Solidarity with Striking Workers at Verizon

The United Steelworkers (USW) union stands in solidarity with the nearly 40,000 members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) at Verizon in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions who have been on strike since April 14.

After 10 months of negotiations, the employer has refused to come to an agreement around several key issues affecting the jobs and lives of the workers. The first is the issue of closing customer service centers and offshoring work to overseas call centers, thus eliminating stable jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits that provide economic stability for workers and communities. The second is Verizon’s demand that workers agree to work as far as 700 miles from their homes for an unlimited number of two-month rotations. This places an unreasonable burden on families, forces spouses and partners to live apart, and separates parents from their children for extended periods of time.

Verizon is also refusing to negotiate in good faith for a first collective agreement for retail workers at Verizon Wireless. The workers in the retail unit only seek job security and a living wage. The company has responded by illegally terminating the union leader. The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against the company and has just concluded a trial seeking to reinstate the illegally terminated employee.

Verizon is actively opposing the strike, offering extremely high hourly wages to strike-breakers, pressuring strikers to resign from the union, threatening to cancel strikers’ health benefits, and making inaccurate claims in the press about the workers’ pay and demands.

The USW calls on our 850,000 members to support our union sisters and brothers who are on strike at Verizon by taking the pledge not to cross picket lines at Verizon Wireless stores: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/take-the-pledge-i-wont-cross-the-line

 

 

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