Verizon Local 13000 Bargaining Report: Thursday, March 10, 2016

The Union and the Company reconvened at the Local Bargaining table this week to address issues that still remained open on the Local table. All of the company proposals on the table involved some sort of give back, elimination of a protection or a reduction in benefit of existing contractual provisions. Over the last 9 months your local bargaining team has had discussion on and off table regarding the company proposals. We pointed out many of the many flaws in these proposals and the negative impact it will have on the safety of our member’s lives, the impact it would have on our member’s employment and the impact it would have on our member’s home and work life.

With that said, yesterday the company withdrew the following proposals:

•Assigning Employees to perform Work Exclusively Performed by a Higher Craft.

•Using Contract Labor to do Locates

•Selection of Tours (would eliminate seniority rights)

•Scheduling of tours (allow company to manipulate 10-7and 1-9)

•Elimination of Chester Red Area Agreement

•Agreement Regarding Motor Vehicle Usage

•Modify Letter Agreement on Contract Labor-Outside Plant Technicians-504 Letter

There still remains one outstanding local issue that is open with the company that we will continue to work on in hopes of reaching a settlement.

The union also withdrew several of our open proposals that we had on the Local table that we did not feel we would be capable of achieving in this round of bargaining.

While this has cleared all but one of the companies local demands we a far from the agreement that is acceptable for our members. The regressive issues that remain on the regional table include but are not limited to; healthcare, retiree healthcare, prescriptions, wages, forced transfers, and moving work/jobs overseas.

You have all taken the fight to management in the work locations and now it is crucial that we keep up the pressure.

The Regional bargaining team is set to reconvene in Philadelphia next Monday and we will update any changes on both the Local and Regional tables as events unfold.