Verizon Strike 2011 - Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross - Take the Bosses Down - Dropkick Murphys

Some 45,000 members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are on the picket lines from Massachusetts to Virginia after the unions' contract with the telecommunications giant expired at midnight on Sunday. This contract fight is not about money. Based on what it has taken in so far, Verizon's revenues for this year are estimated at more than $108 billion. Net profits last year were $6 billion. Verizon's top five executives alone received compensation of $258 million over the past four years. The company's demands--which have not changed since negotiations began in June--would hollow out union power at the company, gutting health care, pensions, sick days, overtime pay and job security. Verizon wants to make union members pay 25 percent of their health care costs through a high-deductible plan to replace one where workers have paid nothing until now, and it wants to further weaken the CWA's and IBEW's ability to defend their members.

"In the end, they want to take away our union," said Melissa, a shop steward for CWA Local 1101 said on the picket line at Verizon's headquarters in lower Manhattan. "The new Verizon CEO, who used to run AT&T, is from Texas. He doesn't want a union workplace."

See Also: "Occupy Wall Street": Capitalist Crisis Sparks Populist Protests http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/index.html

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