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Local Verizon workers will be sent east if strike materializes [The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.](Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 05--Hundreds of Verizon Business workers in Colorado Springs have been trained as replacement workers and will be asked to travel to New York and other northeastern states if unionized workers launch a strike against Verizon Communications on Sunday, a local employee who asked to remain anonymous says. Verizon's contracts with 45,000 members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers expire at midnight Saturday. The worker, who didn't want to be identified because he feared for his job, said local Verizon Business workers would be sent to install fiber-optic service in Baltimore, Philadelphia and locations in New Jersey and New York in the event of a strike. Verizon Business employs about 1,100 at an information technology operation at 2424 Garden of the Gods Road in northwest Colorado Springs that focuses on network operations and software development. Rich Young, a Verizon spokesman in Philadelphia. said the company has been training "tens of thousands " of nonunion employees nationwide "to perform emergency work assignments." He declined to disclose from what locations the telecommunications giant will draw replacement workers, but said not all of its 135,000 nonunion employees will be subject to the emergency assignments. "We have taken steps to keep our network and systems fully functional if a job action or strike should occur," Young said Friday as contract talks continued. "As part of getting ready for the contract expiration, over the past several months we have been training tens of thousands of our employees at locations around the nation to perform emergency work assignments. We are a communications company that millions of residential and business customers depend on. In the event of an emergency or other adverse action, we will need all hands on deck." Young said employees will be sent to work in network repair, customer service, billing, back office support and other operations in any of the nine northeastern U.S. states where Verizon operates its traditional telephone business, but noted they would sent in waves. Verizon will pay all travel, lodging, meals and other costs for employees on such assignments, he said. Emergency workers and those in critical jobs elsewhere, including Colorado Springs, will begin working 12-hour shifts six days a week if the two unions launch a strike against the company. More than 200 North Carolina-based Verizon workers, most of them from a similar Verizon Business information technology operation in Cary that employs 1,800, also have been told they will be sent on similar temporary assignments that could last several weeks or longer, The News & Observer in Raleigh reported Thursday. "Replacement workers represent the epitome of corporate and anti-worker values. They will take jobs away from people who are fighting for good jobs and benefits and goes against the core values of the IBEW that we fight for every day," said Mike Ham, president of IBEW Local 113 in Colorado Springs. Although members of both unions overwhelmingly have authorized a strike, a strike is not inevitable. Negotiations continued and workers remained on the job without a contract after a previous agreement expired in both 2003 and 2008. In 2000, more than 86,000 unionized workers walked off the job during an 18-day strike. Faced with declining revenue in its traditional telephone business, Verizon is seeking concessions from the two unions, including tying pay increases more closely to job performance, making it easier to fire union workers for cause, halting pension accruals for existing workers and granting no pensions or sick leave to new employees as well as requiring all workers to pay part of their health insurance premiums. The unions argue that the company remains profitable and the cuts would erode the living standards of their members. "We are negotiating in good faith to reach an agreement that balances the needs of all parties," Young said. "We are confident that will happen." -- Call the writer at 636-0234. ___ To see more of The Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.gazette.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544) |