Outside Verizons lower Manhattan headquarters, crowds of nearly 200 strikers are encamped – many of them with their entire families, as construction workers from the World Trade Center site next door comes by to wish you good luck. Some strikers listened to Union officers gives speech on the bull Horn when someone motioned to workers ' compensation comes back from their lunch break: cries of "scab" pierced the air.
The company is fighting back vigorously. Manhattan judge ruled simply that only a specified number of strikers to picket a company Web site: between 6 and 50, depending on the size of the location, public radio reported.
Workers in telecommunications giant has been on the picket line before – for example during four months long strike in 1989 in predecessor company, NYNEX. But the current operation – 45,000 members of the communications workers of America and international brotherhood of electrical workers from New England to Virginia walked off the job on August 7 – comes at a critical time. A strike in a high profile company that is so profitable even asks for extreme worker concessions is a game which the unions hope could win wider sympathy around the country. Even fought unions to turn the national media coverage Wisconsin of protests in the electoral process victories; the public may not be willing to support labour.
A year ago told CWA leaders its members to prepare for a strike. The company claimed $ 1 billion in concessions – amounts to a salary and benefits cut at $ 20,000 per employee and the abolition of pensions for new workers. cwa District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton said that the company also was demanding pensioners pay $ 6,000 annually for their medical services "after the given promises that it would be free". This, Union leaders point out, despite a $ 19bn profit in the last four years. Verizon's argument is that all the profits come from non-union wireless operation, while unionised forms wireline end is a bulky, money-losing dinosaur.
But the company's claim to control? Cable-based maintenance is actually the backbone of the wireless service. Mobile phone carriers (Verizon and other carriers) uses copper infrastructure is built and maintained by Union workers. This same network also supports landlines for companies that still rely on them, and alarm systems for offices and housing. "AT&T, MetroPCS, the lease it from us," says Mike Nixon, who has worked as a field engineer with the company for 23 years. "Verizon profits no matter what."
Strikers say it on corporate greed. Verizon actually started a new venture, Verizon Wireless when it went to the mobile phone business – in order to avoid new workforce from automatically fed into the negotiation agent device. 2007 meeting minutes (A) by American rights at work (pdf) said Verizon has "maintained non-union divisions of interfering with its workers ' freedom of Association" Although the company "could choose a high-road model for investing in its employees and still compete in a rapidly changing industry.
CWA'S Shelton said he received hundreds of e-mails a day from non-union workers in support of the strike. More inspiring, he added, was to CWA picketers have protests outside Verizon Wireless stores and on several occasions, low wages, retail workers at these sites welcome protesters and inquire about how they can join the Union.
"People are angry," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of workforce education research on Cornell University's School of industrial and labour relations. In New Yorkis CWA succeeded strikes against telephone company in the past. In 1989, it fought off cutbacks to healthcare services and later secured work breaks for members, Bronfenbrenner says.
Trade unions in Wisconsin trøde, they were at a turning point, but the Republicans held their majority in the Senate, State by winning four of six recall election this week. People are generally a far from rushing to sign their Union cards. But when Verizons service is eventually halted by the strike, more and more people will be aware of. Few are likely to be sympathetic to Verizon.
No comments:
Post a Comment