Verizon

"Verizon Communications Inc. is seeking some of the biggest concessions in years from its unions, stepping up pressure on organized labor as the telecom industry shifts to less labor-intensive wireless technology."

Business Manger, Eric Hetrick, writes, "The company has made it abundantly clear that over the next few weeks they are going to throw everything at us except for the kitchen sink, and quite frankly, the kitchen sink probably won’t be that far behind."

Over 100 IBEW and CWA members gathered in Marlboro, MA for a Verizon 2011 contract campaign strategy session. Presentations were made by T-6 Council Chair and IBEW Local 2222 Business Manager Myles Calvey and CWA Local 1400 President Don Trementozzi. There was discussion of key contract issues and the context for bargaining in 2011.

Hundreds of telecom workers voted unanimously at IBEW Local 2222's regular membership meeting on Wednesday, June 2 to support a grassroots campaign to make "tearing down the artificial wall separating the non-union Verizon wireless from the mostly union wireline side of the business" a top priority in negotiations for their next contract in 2011.

Rosa Blumenfeld, an organizer for the North Shore Labor Council, says the employee was acting as a union steward when he politely asked a question about company practices. Blumenfeld said the foreman thrust a finger in the steward's face and said, "You're dead."

In a legal brief filed with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) CWA and IBEW urged that commissioners reject the proposed sale of Verizon's landlines to Frontier as being contrary to the public interest.

There is an oddly named tax loophole—the Reverse Morris Trust—that is so big and lucrative Verizon is getting ready to pull $600 million through it if its sale of rural phone landlines in 14 states to Frontier Communications is approved.

There will be a benefit fund in honor of Jerry to support his family on Friday January 29th, 2010.

Twenty years ago this December, the large Dorchester clan of Jerry “Judgie” Leary was, like many other telephone worker families in the northeast, not exactly flush with cash for Christmas presents. Jerry and 60,000 other members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) had just spent four grueling, impoverishing months on the picket-line battling NYNEX, the regional telecom giant now known as Verizon (VZ).