Verizon Showdown Calls for New Strike Tactics

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from In These Times:



Verizon Showdown Calls for New Strike Tactics

Tuesday
Aug 2, 2011
11:16 am

By Steve Early


The culture of “no contract, no work” is almost extinct in the United States, where strike activity has reached an all-time low.

Among telephone workers in the northeast, at Verizon and AT&T, this union tradition remains strong, based on successful walkouts by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998, 2000 and 2004.

In the longest of those struggles, 60,000 CWA and IBEW members struck for four months against healthcare cost shifting at NYNEX, the New York and New England company now known as Verizon (VZ). Only in 2003 did a regional bargaining unit—then 75,000 strong at VZ—stay on the job after contract expiration to avoid being ensnared in a carefully prepared management plan to replace thousands of strikers with contractors,.

On Saturday night, August 6, CWA and IBEW agreements expire in the same unit, now shrunk to 45,000 by buyouts, attrition, contracting out, job elimination and technological change, and the sale of Verizon operations in four states. In this round of bargaining, workers face unacceptable concessions and a tough decision about how to resist them most effectively. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11770/verizon_showdown_calls_for_new_strike_tactics/