On Aug. 7, 45,000 Verizon workers throughout the Northeast went on strike. Verizon workers who are members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers decided to walk out after the company refused to drop a long list of demands amounting to over $1 billion in concessions.
In the negotiations that started June 22, Verizon pushed demands on the workers that included:
-Freezing of the pension plan for covered workers and elimination of it entirely for all others;
-Shifting the health care costs to workers and retirees;
-Replacing the regular wage increase scheme with one based on subjective evaluations by management; and
-Cutting down paid holidays and annual sick days.
Giving in to these demands would mean the decimation of workers’ benefits that have been won over 50 years of hard struggle. The workers are determined not to give in.
Here are some quick facts about the Verizon Corporation that has pushed these cut-throat demands:
-Last year’s revenues amounted to $100 billion and net profits were $6 billion. Paid federal income taxes=$0.
-Verizon recently paid a $10 billion dividend to its shareholders.
-Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has been paid over $81 million between 2007 and 2010. This is 300 times what an average worker earns at Verizon.
-The top five company executives were paid over $258 million over the past four years.
A company with record profits is demanding its workers do more for less. This is what the workers of Verizon are up against.
On the picket line
In New York City, militant Verizon workers and supporters screamed “Scab!” at managers entering the central Verizon building at 140 West Street, brought in from other areas to perform the jobs of the workers.
“We don’t think they will be able to do what we do,” said Mr. Williams, a striking central office technician who has been with Verizon for 32 years. For Williams, Verizon isn’t just interested in exacting concessions in the form of medical benefits—which he said amounted to a $6,000 wage cut—but wants to bust the union entirely.
Williams and Vinny Galvin, a track assigner and steward with Local 1101, linked the attack to the broader struggle of Wisconsin and other state workers. “It’s the season of attacking the unions,” Galvin explained. Verizon has no financial need to launch their assault now, he said, “they are doing this just because they think they can.”
Picketers in NYC got some good news and a boost of morale when a representative of Teamsters Local 210 emerged from the building with a group of housekeeping workers who belong to that union. They announced they would not be crossing the picket line. One told Liberation News: “Without the union, we are nothing. Today they are coming for them, but tomorrow it could be us.”
With the economic crisis as the pretext, Verizon workers are asked to tighten their belts so the company can keep on raking record profits. Manley K., a striker in Pittsburgh told Liberation News that, “While the capitalist corporations are making billions of dollars in profits, the workers are asked to make sacrifices. We, the workers, need to stick together. The change starts from the bottom, not the top.”
Eric Weis, another striking worker noted, “There’s a reason they made $19 billion [in the last four years], it’s from their workers.”
The Verizon workers’ struggle is part of the bigger class war raging throughout the United States. The words of Tom Mulkerin, who has been working at Verizon for 33 years, reflect this very clearly: “I think it’s [the strike] decisive not just for Verizon but for labor across the country.” Damien Williams also captured this fact when telling Liberation News, “An attack on one group is an attack on us all.”
A worker on the picket line in Pittsburgh, Jason Wyse, said: “The company has billions of dollars in profit and yet they are reaching into the workers’ pockets for more. The workers are the ones who have built this company. I am not going to sit by and watch while all our benefits are being taken from us.”
In times of economic crisis, the class lines that divide society become sharper than ever, laying bare the fact that there is no middle ground between the capitalist pursuit of profits and meeting workers’ needs. The demands pushed by the Verizon Corporation on its workers while making record profits clearly illustrate this. That Verizon executives “earn” salaries in the hundreds of millions also exposes the fact that capitalism is a corrupt, rotten social order based on the exploitation of labor and suffering of the many for the well being of the greedy few.
As the wealth creators in this society, workers have to stand up, organize and fight to bury this rotten order: capitalism. The struggle for socialism is the only way forward to solve the challenges facing the working class, and it is that struggle the Party for Socialism and Liberation fights to advance.
Ben Becker and Walter Smolarek contributed to this report.
