Thousands of Verizon Workers Rally for Fair Contract

New York, NY – Thousands of Verizon workers and their supporters rallied at over 50 Verizon locations today, calling for the company to negotiate a fair contract.

The rallies come after Verizon, which makes $1 billion in profits every month, has refused to bargain constructively with its 39,000 employees over the terms of its contract, continuing to insist on the ability to outsource more jobs, increase health care costs by thousands of dollars a person and slash retirement security.  Verizon also refuses to build the FiOS network throughout New York while abandoning proper maintenance on the traditional telephone network.

“We’re ready to bargain. But despite one billion a month in profits, Verizon still insists on everything from eliminating job security to taking away benefits from workers injured on the job.  ” said Dennis Trainor, Vice President of the Communications Workers of America – District One.  “We’re going to keep up our fight against Verizon’s greed until they come to the table with a real offer.”

Background

39,000 workers are currently working without a contract at Verizon.  Fortune Magazine ranked Verizon the 15th largest corporation in America in 2014, with revenues of $127 billion, profits of $9.6 billion, and market capitalization of $198.4 billion. Verizon had profits of $28 billion over the last five years, and paid its top five executives $249 million during that time.

On July 21st, Verizon reported profits of $4.4 billion in 2Q2015 on revenues of $32.2 billion. This came on top of $4.2 billion in profits in 1Q2015, which means Verizon has made $1 billion in profits every month for the last 18 months. The company also reported that during the first six months of 2015 it has paid out over $9.3 billion to shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks, an increase of almost $5.8 billion over the first half of last year. In the Wireline division, Operating Cash Flow rose to 23.5%, and operating income doubled, from 2.6% to 5.3%. FiOS continues to expand and succeed, now constituting 79% of Verizon consumer revenues on the wireline side, and achieving penetration rates of 35.7% for video and 41.4% for internet in markets where it is competing.

Verizon has not significantly moved off its outrageous initial bargaining demands, made on June 22nd, which includes the following proposals:

• Completely eliminating job security and gaining the right to transfer workers at will anywhere in the company’s footprint.

• Increasing workers’ health care costs by thousands of dollars per person, despite the fact that negotiations in 2011-2012 have cut the company’s health care costs by tens of millions of dollars over the life of the past contract.

• Removing any restrictions on the company’s right to contract out and offshore union jobs.  This comes on top of Verizon’s outsourcing of thousands of jobs in recent years.

• Slashing retirement security.

• Reducing overtime and differential payments.

• Eliminating the Family Leave Care plan, which provides unpaid leave to care for sick family members or care for a newborn.

• Eliminating the Accident Disability Plan, which provides benefits to workers injured on the job.