Verizon Regional Bargaining Report # 51

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Bargaining Committee has been in Philadelphia this week reviewing the Company’s latest comprehensive proposal in detail. We met with the company yesterday and requested detailed explanations of various items to help clarify their intent and the impact they would have on both active and retired members.

Unfortunately the Company’s proposal still includes many unacceptable givebacks and differs significantly from the Union’s last comprehensive proposal. The Bargaining Committee therefore notified the Company that it was withdrawing the Union’s comprehensive proposal, leaving the previous individual proposals on the table.

In addition to the extreme cost shifting in healthcare, the Company continues to demand the following changes to our contracts.

• Corporate Profit Sharing (CPS) – the Company wants to not pay a CPS for the productivity you provide this year because you did not agree to its concessions by a certain date. Rest assured Marc Reed will get his even though it is our labor that produces the revenue.
• Overtime – the Company wants to eliminate daily overtime. So if you work over 7 ½ or 8 hours a day you will only get paid overtime if you work in excess of 40 hours per week.
• Retirement benefits – the Company wants to cap your pension at 30 years. They also want to eliminate retiree’s medical benefits for employees hired after August 2008.
• State and Municipal Paid Leave Laws - The Company wants to escape any legislative requirement now or in the future requiring it to give you paid family leave.
• Sickness and Accident Disability Benefits – The Company wants people suffering from an on-the-job accident or injury to use their incidental absence days and then deny paying you the annual absence from duty lump sum payment.
• Sharing of Calls – The Company wants to create centers of excellence to take sales, service and technical calls and not include you but will include contractors.
• Permanent Transfer – The Company wants the ability to move you up to 50 miles before having to compensate you for moving your residence.

• Contracting Fiber Facilities Transfers and Relocations – The fiber work that we have protected as our exclusive work, the Company now wants to contract out. There go more jobs.
• Closing Centers – If you work in a Delaware center your new work location could be in either Maryland or Pennsylvania. If you work in a Virginia center your new work location could be Maryland. If you work in Williamsport, PA, the Company has you on the road to Scranton, PA.

Despite the Company’s unresponsiveness, the Committee is still committed to find ways to be work with the Company where possible. However, the Committee will not be bullied into accepting an inferior contract just because Marc Reed says we should on his emails. (Keep your decoder rings handy to decipher his Friday emails.)

Our members deserve a contract that provides fair compensation, good benefits, and time with their families. In order to achieve this, we have to be willing to fight back. This means mobilizing at our workplaces, attending meetings, participating in calls, and being prepared to walk out the door if that becomes necessary.

Now is the time to give 100% to fight the demands of a wealthy company that wants to keep squeezing its employees. Now is the time to fight the arrogance of managers who don’t care about the lives of rank-and-file employees. Now is the time to stand with your brothers and sisters who walk on informational picket lines every day and who have mobilized from day one of this fight. Now is the time to stand up and say not this year, not this contract and not on my watch!

As a Union we are all one when we act together, and together we will win.