After 45 days out on strike, Verizon workers are celebrating big gains in their new collective bargaining agreement. The 39,000 East Coast strikers, who have been working without pay since April 13, 2016, have agreed to return to work on June 1.
Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who represent the Verizon workers, have reached a tentative deal with the company. The main sticking point of the strikers was that the company was trying to ship call center jobs overseas. According to the tentative agreement, the existing job security language is being kept in the new contract. In addition, the company has agreed to add an additional 1,300 new call center jobs on the East Coast.
The strike, which was the largest since 2011, also included other gains almost unheard of in non-union workplaces. Verizon workers will enjoy double-digit raises over the duration of the contract. That is a 10.9% increase over the course of four years for tens of thousands of workers. Company-proposed pension cuts have been withdrawn. Not only were the cuts defeated, but the union won a 1% increase in the pension over the course of the agreement. Additionally, some Verizon Wireless retail stores got their first contract.
The workers who voted to unionize in 2014 fought alongside with Verizon workers to achieve a contract and union representation. Another victory the workers won was almost $2,800 in profit sharing. There is a minimum of $700 a year over the duration of the four-year contract. These are just some of the gains won by the workers according to Stand Up to Verizon.
In the press release, Chris Shelton, President of the Communications Workers of America, said “This contract is a victory for working families across the country and an affirmation of the power of working people.”And he is right. For decades, working families in this country have seen their wages become stagnant. The war against organized labor has been intensified and austerity the talk of the day. This is all while profits are high and it is good to be a CEO (Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam made $18 million in 2014 alone).
The Great Recession of 2008 has intensified the attack on working families that has been happening for decades. It is probably hard for a non-union member to think about double-digit raises, a safe pension (or a pension at all) or profit sharing. But that is exactly what unionized Verizon won.
At the turn of the 20th century, labor organizer “Big Bill” Haywood stated, “If the workers are organized, all they have to do is to put their hands in their pockets and they have got the capitalist class whipped.” A century later that still holds true. Early estimates are that the strike will cost the company $200 million in profit. When workers get organized and strike, they win.
