Verizon Wireline Employees on Strike

About 5,400 Verizon workers in New Jersey are among the 45,000 workers on strike after contract talks broke off after midnight Saturday, when a three-year pact expired for wireline employees in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, Verizon and a union leader said Sunday morning.

The workers are on the picket line at multiple locations in New Jersey, according to Bill Huber, president and business manager for the New Jersey-based IBEW Local 827. In Freehold, workers will be striking at the Verizon data center location at 999 W. Main St. and at the Verizon Wireless Store at 175 W. Main St., said Eddie Coppola of IBEW Local 827’s Central Unit.

“Verizon has forced us to do this," Huber said of the work stoppage, adding that the profitable company has asked for about 100 givebacks from the union employees.

In a statement released Sunday morning, Verizon said, "Verizon’s attempts to reach a constructive new contract with two unions representing the company’s wireline employees in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states were unsuccessful, and union leaders announced a decision to call a strike" by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and CWA (Communications Workers of America) unions.

In anticipation of this development, Verizon has activated a contingency to limit the disruption of service during the union's work stoppage, the statement said.

"We have trained thousands of people nationwide, including a couple of thousand here in New Jersey," Verizon spokesman Rich Young said.

Huber disputed that temporary training could adquately prepare management employees to fill in on the wire lines, particularly for Verizon's fiber-optic FiOS network.

"You can't train someone a few weeks to do the job, particularly FiOS," Huber said. Other services normally filled by trained union employees also require more skilled labor as well, he added.

"They don't have the experience, and they don't have the manpower," Huber said on Sunday of Verizon's fill-in employees. "The customers are going to leave in droves, and they are not going to get those customers back."

"It's a major blunder for them, to get their employees on the street," Huber said after the strike was called.

Huber said the unions and the Verizon management were in disagreement on nearly all major issues, including working conditions. He accused the company's top management, including new CEO Lowell McAdam, of trying to break the unions following almost six decades of collective bargaining.

Currently, most union-represented employees pay nothing for health insurance premiums at Verizon, Verizon said in an online statement of its position on bargaining with the unions.

"The company is proposing that its union-represented employees pay a portion of their health care premiums, much like the majority of other Verizon employees," the site said.

Under a proposed new contract, Marc C. Reed, Verizon’s executive vice-president of human resources, said on Sunday morning, union "Verizon employees will continue to receive competitive pay and benefit programs.”

But Huber said on Sunday morning the proposal that Verizon had on the table asked for 100 giveback items, many regarding overtime pay and wages. Yet, he said, "We are not dealing with a corporation that's broke."