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Verizon workers picketingSELINSGROVE, Aug 09, 2011 (The Daily Item - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Sixteen Verizon employees in red shirts spent Monday picketing outside of their Market Street store, joining thousands of workers from Vermont to Washington, D.C. who went on strike, claiming the wireline provider is refusing to negotiate with union demands. The last contract for the region running from Massachusetts to Virginia, expired Saturday night, and that's when Selinsgrove-area union representative Rob Reggia, switching technician for Verizon, got the call that the union was striking. "This is the first day," he said of the strike on Monday, "and it's going to go on till it's settled." Contract negotiations began June 22. Everyone from the Pentagon to Wall Street will be affected eventually, the picketers said. While they are on strike, management is out trying to do their jobs, likely resulting in a backlog of repair requests and new orders, they said. The real experts are not working until their demands are met. "We're willing to go back to work if they're willing to negotiate," said Dan Heeter, a splicer for the Selinsgrove area. "We want to go back to work," echoed Curt Stover, Selinsgrove-are service technician. "We want to be able to negotiate a fair contract. "They're not willing to negotiate," he said of Verizon corporate officials. "Despite making $22.5 billion in profits over the past four and a half years, and paying their top five executives $258 million over the last four years, Verizon seems determined to destroy the middle-class jobs of 45,000 hard-working employees," officials of the Communication Workers of America union, Local 13000, wrote. "It's outrageous and it's unjustified." "Verizon's contract proposals represent the most sweeping attack on middle class jobs we've ever seen at the bargaining table," they added. Their claims against Verizon include the corporation attempting to force active workers and retirees up to an additional $6,800 a year in health care costs, eliminate benefits for workers injured on the job, and is outsourcing a number of jobs overseas at a time when Americans are fighting for jobs. "It's not only a fight for us," Reggia said, "but a fight for middle-class America." According to The Associated Press, Verizon was asking for changes in the contract because its wireline business has been in decline for more than a decade as more people switch to using cell phones exclusively. It had 25 million landlines at the end of the second quarter, down from 26 million at the end of 2010. It has been selling off some of its landlines to other phone companies. The union officials said Verizon has reported profit margins in the wireline business have been improving for the past five quarters. Wireless workers, though non-union, will also be affected through this strike, the landline workers said. The striking workers not only are responsible for maintaining and reparing traditional landlines, they also install the company's fiber-optic FiOS service. The Selinsgrove picketers were joined Monday by a local retiree, a worker from Harrisburg, and Unit 35 union president Tony D'Angelo, of Hazleton. Unit 35 also includes Sunbury, Bloomsburg and Williamsport union branches. The CWA is also being joined in strike by 10,000 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who serve as telephone and repair technicians, customer service representatives, operators and more. To see more of The Daily Item or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailyitem.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, The Daily Item, Sunbury, Pa. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |