NEW YORK–As the August 2 contract expiration nears for Verizon and its unions, the company has gone on the offensive once again to demand major givebacks on job security, health care, sick pay and outsourcing. While the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are coordinating their efforts to hold the line and talk tough, the unions’ sluggish mobilizations and declining militancy spell trouble for their memberships.
In the name of “improved operational flexibility,” Verizon is demanding the right to lay off anyone with less than 10 years’ seniority, a two-tier wage system for new hires, drastically higher co-pays for medical benefits, revision of overtime pay rules, unlimited subcontracting, elimination of most sick pay and ability to transfer almost any work. These demands come on the heels of massive speed-ups through discipline for low productivity, vehicle tracking through Global Positioning Systems and the rigid monitoring of customer service representatives.
Negotiations with Verizon, a Baby Bell company, cover 75,000 unionized workers from Maine to Virginia. And though the CWA won a pledge in 2000 from Verizon to remain neutral in union elections at Verizon Wireless, the company has since resisted unionization at every turn–and declared war on jobs in the densely unionized area of traditional phone service.
Verizon has already laid off 3,400 workers during the current contract. The CWA fought the December 2002 layoffs in New York with an expensive media campaign meant to shame the company. Verizon axed jobs anyway and the union caved, refusing to risk an illegal strike and the possibility of heavy fines.
Missing from the unions’ strategy is any reliance on the rank and file to fight on their own behalf. Years of top-down management of the unions has meant that much of the membership has no experience with real militancy. The union has become a passive service and negotiating organization.
There is also no vision of how to fight the one-sided class war waged by corporations to eliminate unions and drive down labor costs. Most unions respect the employers’ right to make a profit and shun the reality that cooperation doesn’t work. They’re in a crisis because their top-down, bureaucratic solutions don’t work in a recession.
But in 1989, the union faced a similar threat with Verizon’s predecessor, NYNEX–and won. Starting a year before contract expiration, job actions and strike mobilizations prepared members for a serious fight, leading to a virtual shop-floor war in the months leading up to the strike.
Greater solidarity between the CWA and IBEW played a key role, and the CWA leadership under the direction of District 1 Vice President Jan Pierce was more willing to confront the company. Mobilization coordinators organized fellow workers for mobile pickets that harassed scabs in the field.
During the 17-week strike, hundreds of strikers were arrested or suspended upon return to work, but the militancy they displayed by stopping trucks and following scabs led management to conclude that the picketing was “the worst we have ever seen…the degree and intensity of harassment is devastating.” The CWA and IBEW won the strike and preserved wages and benefits in successful strikes in 1998 and 2000.
That level of mobilization and militancy is now largely absent. Members are frustrated with the leadership for failing to stop any of the company’s attacks. Rank-and-file action is needed to push the leadership to action.
The return of laid-off members should be a central demand for the strike, the rallying cry of LaidOffVerizon, a rank-and-file group in New York. Mobilization coordinators should involve co-workers in preparing for a strike and picket duty. Work-to-rule campaigns should become highly visible throughout July.
This isn’t a simply a war between Verizon and its unions, but one battle in a corporate and government-backed war on the international working class. It’s time to fight back.
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