Above Photo: This June 4, 2014 photo shows signage at a Verizon Wireless retail store at Downtown Crossing in Boston.(Credit: AP/Charles Krupa)
Verizon workers are fighting back against a machine that increasingly takes them for granted. This is so important.
Verizon workers have been without a contract since last August, which has led nearly 40,000 workers to go on strike in states from Virginia to Massachusetts for the past month. Verizon has about 40 percent fewer unionized U.S. workers now than a decade ago, and the telecommunications giant wants to send thousands more jobs offshore and outsource additional work to low-wage non-union contractors.
In a presidential election year in which the electorate is motivated by deep economic anxiety over the loss of good paying jobs, Verizon’s decision to prioritize short-term profits and executive compensation over investments in advanced services that rely on its skilled workforce makes it the poster child for corporate excess.
This is the same economic predicament facing so many American voters. These strikers are courageously standing up to fight for a fair economy that supports middle-class workers and their communities; supporting these Verizon workers is crucial if we are to begin making the real changes needed to fix our economy and rein in excessive corporate power that undermines the broadly shared prosperity that once built the American middle class.
This is a watershed moment for American democracy. Millions of people feel that the economy is not creating enough good jobs to provide economic security. And there’s well-founded concern that global forces of trade and technology are not benefiting the average American family, even as they enrich the largest corporations and the 1 percent.
On the presidential campaign trail, these sentiments are being leveraged by candidates from both parties who have pointed to job losses in the wake of trade deals to connect to voter economic anxiety. In exit polls from the New York primary, 87 percent of Democrats and 92 percent of Republicans said they are worried about the direction of the nation’s economy. With 5 percent unemployment and steadily rising job numbers, “worried about the direction of the economy” does not mean fear about a recession. Rather, it means people feel the rules of the game are rigged against them.
Verizon’s version of the rules harm Americans both as workers and as consumers. At the same time Verizon has offshored and outsourced union jobs, it has refused to adequately invest in the hugely popular FiOS service that is installed and maintained by union workers. Verizon has violated cable franchise agreements with New York City and Philadelphia by failing to give every resident and business access to its advanced broadband network. Verizon unions have mounted public campaigns to get the company to honor those agreements and to bring FiOS to the many communities where there’s no service at all, including Baltimore, western Maryland, western Massachusetts, virtually all upstate New York cities, and many parts of Pennsylvania. Consumers and small businesses are starved for high-speed Internet access — their interests and those of Verizon workers are in perfect alignment.