More 45,000 Verizon land line (and Fios) workers across the country have been on strike since Sunday. The workers say the company has asked for nearly 100 concessions including wage cuts and increased employee contributions to health care plans and pensions. The company has also proposed to freeze pensions for current employees and eliminate it for new hires.
Verizon says the landline business is slowing -- though Verizon overall is booming. Verizon's wireless division is non-unionized. Striking workers say they're trying to keep middle-class jobs, and are fighting a corporate effort to shoot the legs out from under the rank and file workers at a time when profits are rising and executives are making obscene sums of money.Verizon says the world is changing and the unions have to change, too.
More on the issues at Huffington Post and Bloomberg News.
Photo by MK Metz
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3 comments:
verizon is a shit commercial tho
dantes inferno
They were out again today, asking people not to shop at Verizon Wireless. Hard to not though if you have a contract. Wonder if we could renegotiate our contracts like they want to renegotiate their employees contracts!
Verizon's top 5 executives have made an average of $12,400,100 a year over the last 4 years. (Some estimate $12,900,000 but we'll go with the lower figure.) Each executive is therefor worth 177 top-paid union men and women bringing home $70,000 in pay, overtime and benefits, or 250 union workers at various pay rates.
On its billions in profits, Verizon pays 10 percent in taxes (on what's left over after deducting everything including the lint in the CEO's pocket.)
Love the phones. The union guys did a great job installing them and answering my questions. But think the destruction of middle-class jobs is a bit much in the face of these overpaid executives and Verizon is not pulling its weight, tax-wise. After the union folks lose their jobs, no one will be left to buy their wireless phones.
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