About 39,000 Verizon landline and cable workers in nine Eastern states, including Pennsylvania, walked off the job after little progress in negotiations since their contract expired last summer. Rallies were held in numerous cities, including Downtown Pittsburgh, where union officials estimated about 600 people gathered early Wednesday.
The employees had been working under the terms of a contract that expired Aug. 2, 2015. Management said it offered to participate in mediation if the unions extended their strike deadline, but the strike went forward.
Tom Crawford of Kilbuck, a regional vice president for the Communication Workers of America Local 13000, said he has participated in hundreds of hours of negotiating sessions since the weeks before the last four-year contract expired. Some 4,000 workers in the Pittsburgh region are impacted, said Mr. Crawford, a systems technician for Verizon who has been with the company for 29 years.
Verizon Communications Inc. has a total workforce of more than 177,000 employees.
Those participating in the strike action are employees who deal with Verizon’s landline service, as opposed to its wireless service, though strikers were deployed to retail locations in an effort to be more visible to the public.
The striking workers are members of two unions: the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Together, they represent installers, customer service employees, repairmen and other service workers in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., for Verizon’s landline and cable business, which provides fixed-line phone services and FiOS Internet service.
Mr. Crawford said critical stalemates pertain to the company’s demand that employees “pay more for less health care,” job losses and pay. He contends Verizon wants to move its “desk jobs” to overseas locations.
Verizon spokesman Rich Young said the company was disappointed union leadership called a strike. He said it has trained thousands of nonunion workers to fill in for striking workers. “We will be there for our customers.”
While the unions condemn Verizon for wanting to freeze pensions, make layoffs easier and rely more on contract workers, the company pointed to health care issues that need to be addressed for retirees and current workers because medical costs have grown. The company has acknowledged wanting greater flexibility to manage its workers.
Mr. Young said the unions’ talk about offshoring jobs and cutting jobs is “absolute nonsense.”
For Mark Auen, 49, of Bethel Park, this is his fifth strike since joining Verizon about 20 years ago.
A switching equipment technician, he walked the picket line Wednesday morning outside the Verizon offices near the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Smithfield Street, for one key reason, he said: preservation of a decent livelihood in the United States.
Mr. Auen described the situation as “a microcosm of what’s happening around the country. They make a profit but they want more from us [the workers]. ... Then they send our jobs overseas.”
By mid-morning, about 100 striking workers were crowding the sidewalk, many wearing placards as passing vehicles honked horns in support.
After the morning rally, the picket line was staffed by around a dozen workers holding signs in the chilly shade of the Bell Telephone Building. Workers plan to picket in four-hour shifts, depending on their typical work schedule, said Shari Binkney, a translation administrator for Verizon.
Because the Downtown offices are staffed 24 hours a day, the picket line will be staffed “all around the clock, all day, all night,” Ms. Binkney said.
Verizon worker Dara Gray said the striking workers’ jobs are not as easily replaceable as management thinks.
“If anyone’s waiting for their service to be installed, or if anyone has problems with their phone service or circuit — because supply circuits to major businesses everywhere — if it goes down, then you’re at the mercy of management who doesn’t do our job on a daily basis.”
In August 2011, about 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike for about two weeks.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
First Published: April 13, 2016, 10:31 a.m.
