Working Fer The Man

Verizon Strike Turns Away Customers and Chases Scabs

Here’s a story from Labor Notes

Verizon’s strike in the Northeast is into Day Five, and big picket lines are turning away customers at Verizon’s wireless stores.

Injunctions could threaten one of the union’s most effective tactics, mass picketing at stores. But another—mobile picketing—is causing havoc for the company. Techs are chasing scab managers through the field, making them cross their very own personal picket line at the bottom of a pole or while they try to work in a manhole.

The strike covers 45,000 members of the Communications Workers and Electrical Workers (IBEW) from Massachusetts to Virginia. Verizon wants to eliminate pensions, as well as limit raises and force big health care costs onto current workers and retirees. The concessions would take $1 billion from workers, at a company which made almost $20 billion during the last four years.

“Everybody’s very motivated,” said Barbara Smith, a member of CWA Local 1109 in Brooklyn. When her local pickets wireless stores, “pedestrians stop and thank us because they understand that this fight is about more than Verizon.”  Read the rest