Verizon Bargaining 2011: Report # 7

Bargaining resumed today with CWA Districts 1, 2 & 13 and the IBEW Locals 827 and 1944 Regional Bargaining Teams meeting with the Company. The Unions passed proposals today concerning the following:

• Job Security and work rules for our Verizon Business, Verizon Enterprise Delivery and Video Hub Technician members
• Transfer rights
• Training and Education
• Improvements in our Benefits

We also spent time discussing some of Verizon’s proposals asking clarifying questions and presenting information requests concerning contracting out of bargaining unit work. This not only includes contractors, but our Mid-Atlantic work performed by other Verizon entities outside our bargaining units.

Your Union committee made it clear from the very beginning this bargaining is All About Jobs. Without a job, the best wages and benefits in the world gain you nothing. Verizon is doing everything possible to shrink the Unionized workforce in an effort to eliminate us. They would like nothing better than to not have to be in bargaining. If we don’t stop them now, dead in their tracks, that day will soon be here. We will no longer have to be concerned about whether or not we will have a strike because we won’t have a Union contract. Then whatever the company wants to do to us, they will.

Sisters and Brothers, we cannot sit by and wait for that day to come. Now is the time to stand up and fight back. We need everyone to get involved in this fight. No one can afford the luxury of sitting back and waiting for someone else to take the fight to management. We have to be in the streets, in their face every day letting them know this is a fight they cannot win. For ourselves and our families we must say, NO MORE! No givebacks. We will NOT go backward. Forward is the only direction we know how to go. You can only see where you’re going by moving forward. Our rear view mirrors are broken and our heads can’t turn around that far.

We must shout loud and clear that as the people who make this company run:

WE WON’T GO BACK!

WE WON’T GO BACK!

WE WON’T GO BACK!