‘ONE DAY longer, one day stronger,’ striking Verizon workers chant on their picket lines as their fight proceeds into its second month.
More than 40,000 Verizon communication workers across America, began their strike in defence of jobs and conditions on April 13th. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) reported in a press release last Friday that it has uncovered a massive Verizon ‘offshoring operation’ in the Philippines.
It said that over the course of a four-day visit to the Philippines last week four representatives of the CWA strikers discovered that the extent to which Verizon is offshoring work is far beyond what has previously been reported and what the company has publicly claimed.
Verizon is offshoring customer service calls to numerous call centres in the Philippines, where workers are paid just $1.78 an hour and forced to work overtime without compensation. Terrified that the public might find out about what has happened to the good workers’ jobs the company has shipped overseas, Verizon sent private armed security forces after peaceful CWA representatives and called in a SWAT team armed with automatic weapons.
CWA President Chris Shelton said: ‘Executives repeatedly have claimed that Verizon offshores few jobs, and none that affect our members. Recently, our union was contacted by call centre workers in the Philippines who revealed that Verizon was lying to our members and the public about the extent of the off-shoring of good American jobs, so we sent four CWA members to the Philippines to learn the truth.
‘When our members uncovered how Verizon is padding its incredible profit margins by replacing good paying American jobs with poverty-wage jobs abroad, Verizon sent armed guards and a SWAT team after them.’
Shelton continued: ‘Worse, Verizon has doubled down on its deception, claiming workers were on a “vacation”. Let’s be clear: being on strike, exposing Verizon’s lies about off-shoring and being harassed by Verizon armed security guards is no vacation. Striking men and women from Massachusetts to Virginia are standing up for their families, their customers and to save middle class (workers’) jobs for all Americans.’
Appearing on a picket line in Syracuse on April 14th, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam claimed that only a small part of the business calls were sent to call centres in the Philippines. But CWA’s delegation last week uncovered call centres in the Philippines staffed with workers during US daytime hours taking every imaginable type of customer service call related to the company’s wireline services.
At one call centre, the depth of Verizon’s greed was exposed when the CWA delegation discovered that the offshore workers are paid just $1.78 an hour to answer calls from frustrated customers based in the US. And despite Verizon’s protestation that the strike is not affecting service, it has forced call centre workers in the Philippines to work overtime hours since 40,000 highly trained US employees went on strike, including about 13,000 US call centre workers.
Call centre workers said they were forced to commit to 1-2 hours of overtime five days a week, plus a full 8-hour 6th day of overtime. Verizon’s subcontractors do not pay workers additional overtime compensation for these hours. The truth is that Verizon is destroying middle-class American jobs so that it can pay workers $1.78 per hour and force them to work around the clock, rather than preserve good jobs in our communities.
‘That’s what our strike is about. Instead of profiting from poverty abroad, Verizon should come back to the table and negotiate a fair contract that protects middle-class jobs,’ said Dennis Trainor, President of CWA District One. One of Verizon’s key demands in the strike is the ability to close several call centres based on the East Coast, which are staffed by union members who earn a living wage with decent benefits.
The company also wants to reduce the percentage of call centre work that must be handled within the state that it originates from, another ploy that enables it to shift work to low-wage, non-union domestic contractors, or to Filipino or Mexican call centres.
‘Talking about poverty pay does not warrant a response from armed guards, but it seems Verizon is going to great lengths to try to hide their strategy of outsourcing middle-class American jobs in favour of poverty wages abroad,’ said CWA District 2-13 Vice President Edward Mooney.
When confronted about these issues at their corporate headquarters in the Philippines on Wednesday, May 11, Verizon officials refused to speak to the representatives. Presumably, it is difficult to justify paying workers $1.78 an hour when the company’s CEO made $18 million last year, and the company has piled up $1.5 billion a month in profits for the past 15 months.
When the CWA delegation left peacefully, Verizon had their armed private security team pull over the departing van on a public street. The Verizon security team then called in a SWAT team, who surrounded the car, bearing automatic weapons.
One police officer with his face covered in a balaclava pounded on the van window with his automatic rifle, demanding that the labour representatives leave the vehicle. The union representatives, including CWA staff, a representative of UNI (global labour federation) and representatives of KMU (a Filipino union), were allowed to leave without further issue, as they had done nothing illegal and the police had no cause to detain them.
Meanwhile, following a meeting with the US Secretary of Labour Thomas E. Perez, Verizon management and the unions representing the 40,000 striking workers are expected to resume negotiations this week. The workers went on strike on April 13, after having failed to reach an agreement on a new labour contract — on the issue of healthcare, moving jobs offshore, and temporary job relocations.
The CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represent the workers on strike, mostly working for the Verizon”s FiOS service on the East Coast. Perez met with Verizon CEO, Lowell McAdam, President of the CWA, Chris Shelton, and President of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Lonnie Stephenson on Sunday, rekindling the negotiations process between the two sides.
Perez’s office later released a statement: ‘The best way to resolve this labour dispute is at the bargaining table, and I am heartened by the parties’ mutual commitment to get back to immediate discussions and work toward a new contract.’
The tense standoff between Verizon and its striking workers has turned increasingly bitter in Delaware and along the East Coast. Verizon accuses pickets of having cut cable and phone lines and harassing ‘replacement technicians’, but union leaders deny the charges and insist that the cut lines are the result of Verizon using untrained workers and accuse the company of misrepresenting incidents to try to curry public favour.
Last Tuesday Delaware State Police claimed a Verizon picket ‘rear-ended’ a replacement worker’s car in a three-vehicle crash northbound on I-95 near Harvey Road in Wilmington. The female contractor’s car ended up in a ditch as a result of the accident. Three people were transported to Wilmington and Christiana Hospital for non-life threatening injuries, according to Master Cpl. Jeffrey Hale.
Verizon spokesman Richard Young claimed the female contractor was targeted by pickets who deliberately followed her. He claimed the picket engaged in ‘outrageous and intolerable behavior’.
But Beth Marvel, executive vice president of CWA 1301, insisted the contractor, not the picket, was responsible for the crash. She said the woman intentionally stopped her car while driving along the busy highway, causing the accident. ‘Stopping in the middle of I-95 is aggressive driving,’ Marvel said. ‘If she really feared for her safety, she would have pulled over and called 911. Whether stopping was intentional or not, she was the cause of the accident, not our member.’
Marvel insisted that union members are permitted under law to follow contractors and protest in front of their vehicles at locations where they are working, including private residences. Verizon has also made accusations of 160 cases of cut wires along the east coast during the course of the strike. ‘It is deliberate acts by criminals who are putting the lives of our consumers in danger,’ claimed Verizon. ‘One of our consumers could lose the ability to call 911.’
But Marvel replied that none of her members are committing sabotage against Verizon and blamed the damage on a combination of natural deterioration that occurs over time and the use of replacement workers, whom she said do not have the training to adequately repair the equipment.
‘I don’t know who is behind it,’ she said. ‘I do know before the strike it was trained technicians fixing the box and after the strike it was untrained technicians who don’t have a clue.’
