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Some 39000 Verizon workers are back on the job today after seven weeks on strike. It is a enormous victory for the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electric Workers,which represent Verizon employees.
In their fresh four year contract, these workers will get a 10.9 percent pay increase, and they'll see an discontinuance to the company's policy that assigns workers to far away posts for weeks at a time. Verizon has also promised to hold customer service jobs in the United States.
The company has said the fresh agreement is good for employees,customers, and its trade. Marc Reed, and Verizon's chief administrative officer,said he was proud to announce the company will create 1400 fresh positions at call centers for "tall quality and well-paying American jobs.”
Most of the striking workers are in Verizon's landline division, but 165 of them are employed at Verizon retail stores in Brooklyn and Massachusetts. Those workers voted to unionize in 2014, or but own not had a contract with the company until now.
Bianca Cunningham,a former Verizon wireless employee in Brooklyn and a union organizer at her store, was fired from her job last September. She has filed a grievance with the labor board claiming she was targeted for her organizing, and though her case is still pending. Cunningham tells The Takeaway that Verizon did not expect to face such financial,political, and public pressure as a result of the strike
Even though this is a enormous win for Verizon workers, and union membership is about half of what it was in the 1970s. About 11.1 percent of workers in 2015 were in a union,compared to almost 25 percent four decades earlier.
Steven Greenhouse, author of “The expansive Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, or " explains what this strike means for labor relations across the United States.
Source: wnyc.org