Verizon Strike To End On Tuesday

It looks like the strike will be over Tuesday, at least for now. The Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have agreed to go back while they continue negotiations. Here's a quote from the Pittsburg Business Times published at 6:24 PM today.

"We have reached agreement with Verizon on how bargaining will proceed and how it will be restructured," said a joint statement released Saturday afternoon by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers . "The major issues remain to be discussed, but overall, issues now are focused and narrowed."

The two unions and the company will continue to negotiate the sticky points as listed by William Huber, president of IBEW Local 827 in New Jersey:

• Verizon wants to tie pay increases to performance review.
• Verizon wants the union workers to contribute to health-plan premiums.
• Verizon wants to freeze pensions at the end of this year.
• Verizon wants to eliminate the sickness and death program
• Verizon wants to cut the sickness disability benefits from 52 to 26 weeks.

45,000 workers will return to work under the contract that expired on August 6. At this time, there is no specific deadline for a new contract.

Verizon Strike Goes On

The strike continues. Here's some interesting details pulled from a Steven Greenhouse New York Times piece published on August 14:

• Verizon says its unionized workers average $70,000 a year before overtime and $91,000 with overtime. But union officials say only a small percentage of workers earn that much with overtime, an amount they say would require hundreds of hours of it. 
• Company officials note that the average U.S. worker earns $23 an hour, translating to $48,000 a year for a full-time worker. 
• Union officials say Verizon's proposed health insurance changes would cost some workers $6,800 more each year, and its overall proposals would cost workers $20,000 on average each year.
• In addition to the health insurance changes, Verizon has called for a pension freeze, reduction of sick days and elimination of all job security provisions -- a proposal workers fear will lead to far more layoffs and outsourcing, especially of call center workers.

Doug Anderson, a Verizon technician for 15 years is quoted in the piece:

"What we make is just a living wage in the New York area. On what I earn, my family can't even afford to live where I work -- Westchester County (NY). And on what we earn, it's hard to send a child through college."

The estimated median household income for Westchester County, New York in 2009 was $77,189 and the mean price for a detached house was $776,277.

Verizon Strike - Could Be A Long One

I'll front this post by saying my Dad worked for AT&T as a technician for about 30 years, retiring right around divestiture. I was only 11 but remember the long strike (over 100 days) in 1968 like it was yesterday. I've also been teaching telecommunications classes to NYNEX, Bell Atlantic and now Verizon technicians since 1995 as part of the Verizon NextStep program, I've had hundreds of Verizon technicians in my classes and have always been impressed.

Verizon is actually two separate companies when it comes to unionization. There is the landline side - what most of us would call the traditional telephone company. 45,000 Verizon landline employees are unionized and represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). These employees are on the east coast, ranging from D.C. north to Massachusetts. Verizon Wireless is non-union and has coverage across the United States.

It's no secret the landline business is in decline and the company is currently focused on building out the wireless business. Here's the sticky points as listed by William Huber, president of IBEW Local 827 in New Jersey:

• Verizon wants to tie pay increases to performance review.
• Verizon wants the union workers to contribute to health-plan premiums.
• Verizon wants to freeze pensions at the end of this year.
• Verizon wants to eliminate the sickness and death program
• Verizon wants to cut the sickness disability benefits from 52 to 26 weeks.

I've always been impressed with the work ethic of the technicians, starting with my Dad who went about 19 years without taking a sick day. I see the same level of work and family commitment I saw in my Dad in today's Verizon technicians.

I do think this strike could rival my Dad's long 1968 strike in length. Hope I'm wrong.

Update 8/8/11 at 6:39 AM

Here's a piece of an interesting email I got from one of the technicians I had in class a while ago:

"We were told for the last year that Ivan was stepping down as CEO after the contract was done. When the news came out a couple weeks ago that he was stepping down a week before the contract expired, we should have known that was not good. We always received decent contracts from Ivan. From what I hear the company would not back down on any of their demands, even late Saturday, I also heard the union had agreed to pay some towards healthcare."

Ivan Seidenberg worked his way up in the company the old school way, starting as a cable splicer (he was in the union) out of high school. Lowell McAdam, the new President and Chief Executive Officer of Verizon, came up a different path.