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| Verizon workers last struck in 2011 |
Afscme Local 444, retired
Here we go again. Some 39,000 Verizon workers are expected to walk off the job today (April 13th) in response to the company’s aggressive attack on their living standards. This is a replay of the strike back in August 2011 it seems to me and I’m sure the outcome will not differ much from back then as the leaders of the unions representing Verizon workers, the CWA and IBEW have not changed their conciliatory approach to labor relations.
Here we go again. Some 39,000 Verizon workers are expected to walk off the job today (April 13th) in response to the company’s aggressive attack on their living standards. This is a replay of the strike back in August 2011 it seems to me and I’m sure the outcome will not differ much from back then as the leaders of the unions representing Verizon workers, the CWA and IBEW have not changed their conciliatory approach to labor relations.
I was on the picket lines in the 2011 strike and
followed it as best I could. I am not
clear on the outcome. Despite reports in the media about the size of the walk
out and organized labor flexing its muscles, I am sure nothing much was gained,
perhaps a slightly less concessionary deal that the labor hierarchy refers to
as victories these days.
Back then we had the usual comments in the media
from labor officials that are aimed at reassuring the bosses that they are open
to concessions, just somewhat less aggressive ones. "We remain ready to
meet with Verizon to work out a fair agreement, but at this point, we had no
choice.'",
said the president of the IBEW local back then.
The 2011strike that cost workers two weeks pay, demanded nothing other than that the bosses be nicer at the negotiating table, it was a strike to make them talk to them in a friendlier way. This useless strategy is incompetent at best and criminal at worst. “The ball is in Verizon’s court” Rolando Scott, the president of CWA Local 1109, said back then, “They have to let us know what is important to them. We are willing to negotiate on all items.” This is a common excuse the labor hierarchy gives for the bosses’ aggression, it’s just a lack of communication on their part, an infantile idea if there ever was one. They made it clear in the media that they were willing to make concessions “willing” in this case means willing sell out their members. The problem is that Verizon “hasn’t engaged in true bargaining yet” Scott added. Why would the employers fear a union with leadership like that?
The 2011strike that cost workers two weeks pay, demanded nothing other than that the bosses be nicer at the negotiating table, it was a strike to make them talk to them in a friendlier way. This useless strategy is incompetent at best and criminal at worst. “The ball is in Verizon’s court” Rolando Scott, the president of CWA Local 1109, said back then, “They have to let us know what is important to them. We are willing to negotiate on all items.” This is a common excuse the labor hierarchy gives for the bosses’ aggression, it’s just a lack of communication on their part, an infantile idea if there ever was one. They made it clear in the media that they were willing to make concessions “willing” in this case means willing sell out their members. The problem is that Verizon “hasn’t engaged in true bargaining yet” Scott added. Why would the employers fear a union with leadership like that?
In 2011 the issues were Verizon wanting to freeze pensions, “tie pay increases more closely to job performance, make it easier to
fire employees for cause and require workers to contribute $100 or more a month
toward health-plan premiums” the Wall
Street Journal reported.
According
to the Associated
Press, the issues are much the same five years later as the company wants
to weaken job security, freeze pensions as well as cut health benefits,
outsource jobs and increase workers commute time by closing call centers. I
would hazard a guess that these centers are not unionized workplaces. It is the
affect any cuts at the call centers might have on Verizon’s unionized workforce
that concern labor officials Verizon also wants to eliminate a clause that
curbs the employer’s ability to lay off workers.
Readers
should read the reports I posted from the strike in 2011 on this blog. I also
included a video with a dismal performance from a labor official. If the labor
hierarchy were heads of corporations they’d have been fired long ago for
failing to produce results.
When
strikes like this occur, a strike in an important industry that has the
potential to really cripple the economy and hurt the bosses in the pocket book,
we see the organizers of them, the top labor officials in the unions concerned
and at the AFL-CIO, rushing around ensuring the bosses in the media that they
mean no harm and making it clear that they are willing to concede some of their
member’s wages rights and benefits in the interest of labor peace. There is never an attempt to bring the power
of organized labor to the table or to link the struggles of working people in
the workplaces to those in our communities or other social issues from fracking
to racism and police abuse.
It’s
all about middle class jobs. The issue is protecting jobs we are told, “their
jobs”. Naturally, the 88% of American workers not in unions and lacking the
wages and benefits that we still enjoy by comparison, have very little sympathy
with us and more often than not, outright hostility. It’s not a strategy
designed to build a wider mass movement that can challenge the power of the
bosses. There is nothing the labor hierarchy fears more than a conscious,
organized rank and file membership willing to fight back and willing to link
the struggles of organized labor to all the other issues workers and the middle
class are facing from the water crisis in Flint to the cuts in services, cost
of education etc.
The
CWA website claims the union has “…intensified their campaign to protect good
jobs in America”, and that, “public
support for a fair contract has grown”. It’s always a “fair” contract. This
commits the leadership to nothing and we all know that what’s “fair” to the
boss isn’t the same as what’s “fair’ to the worker.
I
don’t hold much hope for any positive result from this strike if it takes place
today as there is nothing coming from the unions that would indicate anything
has changed regarding strategy. The
negotiations have been going on for 8 months and the CWA website boasts that.
“Last month 20 U.S.
Senators sent a letter to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam calling on him to
“act as a responsible corporate citizen and negotiate a fair contract with the
employees who make your company’s success possible.”
Wow! That will scare them.
There
is no doubt about it; we are in a serious crisis in organized labor. It is not
new, it has gone on for decades. The
labor leadership doesn’t even pretend any more but openly collaborates through
their policies and lack of action in undermining the wages, benefits and rights
of their members that have been won through a century or more of heroic
struggle. We saw it in the recent refinery strike when the labor tops refused
to shut down the industry in order not to hurt it. For the labor
hierarchy too, profits come first.
Meanwhile Verizon bosses
have been are aggressively preparing for this moment. A Verizon spokesperson said
yesterday that the company has been preparing for the possibility of a strike
for over a year and has trained thousand of workers as scabs. Has the union had a response to that? I would doubt it. Verizon also has a system set in
motion to get its employees from around the country to the strike if they're needed..
Other
than getting 20 Senators to write a letter asking the Verizon CEO whose company
has made $39 billion in profits over the last three years according
to the CWA , we can bet the
strategists in the unions have done nothing.
Why have we just heard about this?
We hear about these strikes as they appear not as they develop over time
and then they go away after the defeat and that’s the end of it. The union officialdom has not spent the year
or the time since the last strike preparing for victory at all a long as the
dues money keeps coming in.
We
will most likely see another step backwards here but we don’t have to. The
Policies of the leadership are the reason the bosses have had such an easy time
of it, but the members have a responsibility too and so do those activists in
locals who claim they want to make changes, want to win a better life and better
contracts for their members.
Their
responsibilities include recognizing that not only can we not continue to passively
sit by as we sink deeper in to the abyss, we cannot win unless we accept that
we have to do something different. We have to build fighting opposition
caucuses in our locals and spread these committees linking up with other locals
as well as community organizations and any other community groupings fighting
austerity and the capitalist offensive. We have to build links internationally in idustries that are international. Caterpillar for instance earns most of its profits outside the US. We have to challenge and replace the
present leadership through these formations.
We
have to recognize that we are in a war and that only a broad united direct
action movement linking organized labor with this movement is what will turn
the tide. We are not just in a war with the bosses. We cannot claim to represent
a serious change without recognizing we will inevitably be drawn in to a conflict
with the resent leadership and must engage this conflict openly and with a different
plan of action and a strategy for winning it.
From
the 2011 strike:
From
2012
We can see in this video from the CWA that nothing has changed. There have been so many videos like this form the union hierarchy. It explains nothing. it puts forward no plan, no strategy and no real demands at all, just a plea to the public to have sympathy with us because it'll hurt "my" family and "my" children's future. It's not as bad as the inflated rat but not much better. It does not inspire, it's not supposed to. The rank and file of organized labor is the force that can stop this. But it it means a fight and a more complicated than the one against the boss. it means an internal struggle. No one likes a fight, we all want a peaceful life. But the bosses won't let you have a peaceful life. We have no choice but to fight.
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