Labor Pool: Battle On The Lines
Unions gear up for fight against Verizon
There's no doubt it's a tough time for unions. The percentage of workers who are organized slides downward every year, and powerhouses like the United Auto Workers have been reduced to fighting for scraps with companies that are in deep trouble themselves.
"In these times, my advice to unions is just get an agreement and go on and wait for better times," said Gary Chaison, a Clark University professor of industrial relations who specializes in labor.
Early To Rise
But the unions that represent workers at Verizon Communications Inc. all along the east coast say that's not their plan.
In August, a full year before their contract with the telecom giant expires, thousands of Verizon employees showed up at rallies in Boston and elsewhere to hold signs with slogans like "United We Stand" - and to talk about issues that go way beyond avoiding concessions on wages and benefits.
Union leaders say they are not just fighting for their current members but also for thousands of Verizon workers who do not have contracts. Verizon is made up of three divisions; the company's traditional landline business; Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture with Vodafone Group; and Verizon Business, which used to be MCI before Verizon bought the company.
Many technicians, customer service reps and other employees in the landline division are part of unions (mainly the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Massachusetts and the Communication Workers of America in most other states), but almost no Verizon Wireless or Verizon Business workers are.
Having so many nonunion employees doing such similar work is dangerous for unions, because it gives management the chance to pit one group of workers against another. David Keating, the business manager of IBEW Local 2325 in Northborough, which represents about 1,200 members in Central Massachusetts and parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island, says that Verizon has begun taking some of the work traditionally done by union employees and sending it to nonunion Verizon Business techs instead. Even though there are only about 50 Verizon Business techs in the region, he said it represents a threat to the union workers.
"It's a battle, and we're losing a lot of our work migrating over to Verizon Business," he said.
Into The Fold
Sending the work to nonunion employees is a contract violation, and the unions file grievances over the issue, but what they'd prefer is to bring the Verizon Business workers into the union. They say nonunion employees don't get the same benefits, regular raises or job security that their union counterparts have won. Almost three quarters of Verizon Business techs have signed cards saying they want a union, but the company has fought back. The National Labor Relations Board has accused Verizon of using illegal tactics, including threats of layoffs, to keep some Verizon Business techs in New York and Pennsylvania from unionizing.
Alberto Canal, a Verizon spokesman, said the company is disputing those allegations.
"We're obviously bringing our case forward," he said. "At the end of the day we believe we'll prove that those assertions are incorrect."
Keating said IBEW and CWA may try to tie the Verizon Business techs' union status into the landline workers' contract talks next summer.
Meanwhile, the unions are also waging a battle to stop Verizon from selling its landline operations in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to FairPoint Communication, a far smaller telecom company. Rand Wilson, the AFL-CIO communications coordinator for the Verizon campaign, says if the sale goes forward it will not only let the company shed many of its union employees but also leave less-profitable rural communities with inferior phone service.
"If they can get away with it up there, the [western Massachusetts] 413 area code and some Pennsylvania area codes will be next," said.
Wilson wants the public to see the company's behavior as part of a pattern of irresponsibility.
"It's all about moving away from a kind of commitment to the communities it does business in to provide good jobs and reliable service," he said.
All of which, he says, means that the unions need to go on the offensive if they want to avoid seeing their membership slowly trickle away.
"Ultimately, playing defense is a losing strategy," Wilson said.
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