CWA, IBEW countdown to Verizon strike

it is unfortunate that we as union members must swallow our pride and submit to management abuse and intimitation. i had 25 years and was fired due to being setup by my supervisor. I was constantly humilated and taunted by my supervisor.
i then went to a vz eap therapist that told me to grow a thicker skin. I am now waiting for my last unemployment check and looking for a book on how to deal with persons of this nature in the event the union succeeds in the return of my tech posistion. what happened to the good old days of Ma Bell, when we were all one big happy family? could it be job cuts,lack of backfilling posistions, outsourcing. lack of management humanity couses?- go figure. cold and hungry in Nj.

I'm just glad I don't work for Verizon any more. They worked me into the ground and management harrassed me daily even though my stats we highest on my team. I am on social security disability now thanks to them. Life in the country with fresh air away from a negative environment is great! I was forced to work 6 days a week in a hostile environment. Now I am free!

Everyone with a negative comment on here about the union can kiss my butt! We GOT our contract, no strike, and we have the union to thank! Eat your hearts out you bitter non union fools!

Per AP also done 3 years 10.5% all that is said THANK GOD

The contact is now settled per cwa 1101 site

for the money u guys make the least you could do is work at night when people get home from work.

How do you like your new hours 8am to 9pm.

You all need to shut up solve this and get back to work I want my FIOS.

So I wrote it quick disregarding my grammar. Also, my degree is not in English or typing so who cares. I did not flash my degree's to cause any issues, only in response to the earlier posts about managers and our abilities. NYT, NYNEX, and Verizon has paid or them. My point was anyone in this company can perform any job "WITH TIME". Read the whole post.

The militant attitude is ridiculous. We agree, yet you attack me? This isn't the 1800's and I'm a sweat shop owner. I never said anything bad or that could be misconstrued as looking down at craft, you perform the main jobs daily. I said the truth. How you perceive it is your problem.

Although you got my point I'll state it again, without one another this company sucks. The union brothers and sisters fight is with upper management not lower management. I hope you get a fair contract, but not one that puts both union and managers out of a job in the long run.

SOOOO.... Are we prepared to stop the clock once again????

This is in response to the last post and should be posted below. First of all you sound like a good person, and I respect you for being union before. I do not like the comment that you made about a craft person, in time, could perform a management function. Management is not all that it is cracked up to be. It is just another job involving more paper work and a little more responsibility. If you treat your crew right, they will treat you right in return. If you treat your crew poorly, you may not get that bonus that you are hoping for. One hand washes the other. I also do not feel that I deserve being talked to as if I am a "lowly" craft employee. I do not care if you have two masters degrees. Whatever college you attended apparently did not teach you proper grammar and spelling because you chopped that post to pieces. I also have a masters degree and graduated with honors. Does that make me any better than you? No it does not. My manager has no college at all and I think he does a splendid job. Heck, I know of a gentleman who graduated from Oxford University, which is a very esteemed college, who probably could not change a tire if his life depended on it. Many of my co-workers, who are splicers, have various degrees; history, business management, criminal justice, mathemetics, and so on. The point I am making is that you do not need to flash your degree around as a manager while looking down your nose at the craft members as if they were lowly maggots. This is not the military and you are not an officer.

I enjoy both my union and management experience. I have looked at other companies but as a manger both benefit and wage are excellent, and as a craft member they were incredible. I decided to leave the union and become a manager because I no longer wanted to wait my turn to be a tech and saw people with lower performance but more years of service get these jobs. I made the decision to leave but am proud of that decision becuase every day I come to work I get judged on what me and my team accomplish.

I currently hold two masters degrees, have performed and am confident, with time, could perform any function assigned to me in or out of strike. So generalizing that we could not perform a craft function is wrong.

I am also, confident that any craft person, with time, could perfom a management funciton.

Point is we are all in it together. I hope you get what is fair but It needs to be fair with regards to allowing all of us to still have a job.

Example, UAW really hurt GM with it's demands. Let's work together to make this a company of the future

Yea, quit crying because you hate life as a manager & make half what we do with crap for benefits & have twice as much stress & responsibility. WAAAHAAAA!!!

You sound jealous to me chief. You must not be union huh?

CWA workers, hahaha, I love it, they all complain, they cry, and they whine like the spoiled children whose parents never taught them any better. They feel they are entitled to everything but should be held accountable for nothing. They whine about too much overtime then months later they whine about not getting enough. They claim work hard yet, the installers I've seen in the video installation shops come in between 7 and 8am, screw off till about 11am, head out to lunch, then actually start work around 1, but have billing the company the entire time. That doesn't seem like hard work to me.

I bet Ivan and the CWA top dogs were sitting together at the game feeing each other peanuts and drinking Bud Light. This crap is all rigged.

Don't you wonder how many of your hard working negotiators(union and verizon)were at the Redskins game last night? I just hear rhetoric being blown on both sides of this issue. My spouse is lower management and is getting jerked around just as much as the union guys are getting jerked around.I don't think the unions will call a strike but, they still want to play chicken with the company. And the company is playing chicken using the managers. Don't hate lower management. They have families to feed and are being used as pawns and really have no choice in it.

I AGREE TIMES TEN... Everyone below a certain paygrade is phukked with this... We (union) had the company by the balls being they need us more than ever right now to complete the FiOS roll out, and we will "settle" for a little, and not protect our future... as the company who wanted so much, will give up the fight, and do what... RIF more of its Management who already no longer have pensions, and pay into their healthcare... and top dawgs of IBEW & CWA along with Ivan and his henchmen are gonna sit back sippin' Pina Coladas, eating caviar and playing pocket pool!!! They (the company which is VERIZON) doesnt care about its workers, its management or its customers... they only care about the almighty $$$$$$$. Cha-ching.

Until the investors see that upper management is a joke and demand change, but the unions and the lower management get the shaft!! The only ones who will win through this will be the union suits and the corporate suits. Everyone else gets screwed!! They actually expected pregnant managers
to complete pole training. Can you say lawsuit waiting to happen????? Let's face it Verizon only cares about Verizon!!!! Where is a reporter when you need one??

Paying a small pittance toward your health care will bring you into the norm. That's a 100% non-issue if you're living within the parameters of reality. Another reality that you can expect in the future is no longer having 12 weeks of PAID FMLA leave time.

Speaking of the norm and FMLA, I know someone who recently applied for a dispatching job with a courier company - not a Fortune 15 Corporation. Two of the things being offered were two weeks vacation to start and six days of sick leave. This is as normal as water being wet and dirt being dirty. Suggest a similar scenario to a Verizon manager and they'll stutter, stammer, then ask you, "Where did you work before, the federal government?"

I've never come across a major corporation whose public image is that of a gargantuan, stable, intelligent, successful corporation that struggles so mightily with some of the most elementary fundamentals.

Well don't count your raises yet,,how much are we going to pay for our health care out of that raise?? At this point we have no clue of what our union is settling on. We are working with out a contract!! No matter how you put it, that contract expired at midnight. Is our union looking to the future,, this company is going to have so much money coming in once FIOS is out there. And where will that leave us?? Setting back and watching them get richer and richer while our union just "settled" for us. Thanks for nothing.

The only victims are the customers. The DSL speeds with ADSL2 should far exceed the current offerings at the price. The bandwidth is not sufficient for video steaming even though the advances in compression technology H.264 have lowered the requirements. Verizon is cheating the customer by artificially keeping the DSL output low.

Power DSL
Up to 3 Mbps/768 Kbps Verizon

34.900 Euros a month 18Mbps France Telecom

If you really want to protect your interest the employees, the unions, the state and federal governments would be more involved making sure that the prices are in line according to fair business policies in the United States.

* By the way, these prices were in effect when the Euro was .75 to a dollar!

Whatever happened to caring about the employee?

The world you describe is socialist.

Those who seek a better situation at VZ go into management. For those that do not want to go that route can use their trade skills and open a telecommunication company.

Verizon is offering the same high speed and TV service with Fiber Optic that Europeans already receive with a DSL connection. Of course the Europeans pay far less. FIOS is a big marketing scheme to get people to pay for something way over the top that they do not need.

I do not work for Verizon anymore because I do not like how they treat their clients that pay for their services. Why are the employees who are paid by this avaricious company in both the craft and management departments so surprised that they are also mistreated.

People should realize Verizon is a 1+ billion dollar profitable QUARTERLY company 4 many yrs, It can afford to TAKE care of me. This is not GM or Airlines, where my fellow union members did sacrifice their wages/benefits. VZ is extremely profitable, and now with FIOS IN NYC, A CASH COW, and I mean a cash cow. it has the money and I as a 28 yr employee of NYTEL/AT&T/NYNEX/BELL ATLANTIC AND NOW VERIZON, BETTER take care of me instead of giving chairman of the board & 5 other directors 82 Million dollars last yr. Come on people UNIONS has lost ground since Regan fire air traffic controllers & Clinton ok NAFTA. we as THE COMMON WORKER are now paying the price for it. Verizon CATERS TO BIG BUSINESS'S/WALL ST & SHARE HOLDERS, UNIONS CATERS TO THE WORKING MAN. SO IT IS DAVID VZ GOLIATH. I am so upset that the company hired contractors and especially brought out MCI (NOW VERIZON BUSINESS)Verizon busines is non-union people, AND WE HAVE A CONTRACT THAT STATES NEW BUSINESS WORK IS "FOLDED" INTO THE UNION, BUT verizon does not look at it that way. They are breaking a contract & fios installed by contractors, that also is contractual, and they are breaking that. This is stuff "outside" folks don't see/know. The union employee is getting less work, then ask if we wanna leave (makes us an offer.)It is very scary and an omen, UNIONS don't have the bargaining and muscle anymore like we use to. Shit I want to work, I am a damn devoted "working" union man, but Verizon don't want me, so I ain't leaving quietly. Again A BILLION DOLLARS PLUS each quarter in PROFITS. trust me they can afford to spend roughly 3 billion dollars it cost each yr to take care of the union employees which is benefits (100+ billion dollar a yr company). They got the money. & remember I am on the landline side of the house which is shrinking, we know that, but again verizon wireless (which also is not union) made 1.5 million new customers this QUARTER. and on top of that now Verizon brought AL-Tel wireless 10 million customers for 28 BILLION and so stupid is 5 billion is the price & 23 billion of it is 'DEBT" NOW THAT IS A WASTE OF MONEY. so again, if u have 28 billion 2 buy another company, u can take care of me. Verizon has no foot to stand on. it has money and as a 28 union employee I want my piece of it. Absolutely no reason for this bargaining to be so stupidly intense. CWA/IBEW Union employees don't ask for the world, only to be compensated "fairly". Verizon will be for ever NEW YORK TELEPHONE, I cant wait for AT&T to buy Verzion so I can wear my New York Telephone Shirt. Remember history, at disvestire, there were 7 baby bells now there are two (well 3 Qwest) are now left, DO I SEE MO-NO-PO-LY AGAIN???? believe me it will happen...

Actually, they did contact quite a few retirees and ask them to work.

I agree it's kind of a lame move to gear up, have everyone take their tools and go home with the idea being that they'd not be back for several, days, weeks or (ugh) even months.

But, I am glad my husband is still working, and so is he. Though we'd both rather he be doing it with an iron clad contract that protects his interests.

I feel that the outcome was planned all along. Remember the strike back in 2000? Many of us do. The countdown and picketting was all over the news. This time I never once saw any mention of it. Most people did not even know about our contract expiring. This time we did not see former employees and retirees called up and asked to work. I think that the company and union had long ago decided that they would avoid strike even if it meant working without a contract. Think about it.

I think that most of us have been prepared for the "worst". We are all confused as to why we have been told that "bad" old Verizon would feel our might. Well we are sure showing them. Working like usual. Stike? Hmm, no let's just go back on our word and tuck our tales so they can force more crap down our throats. From both sides. I can't wait to see the FINAL result, when they outsource our jobs to India and CWA let it happen. Thanks for taking my dues, got a great t-shirt. Strike...a match that's as close as those weak motherf are going to go.
By the way, can I have my money back, I don't feel you deserve it, not after I carried my stuff out to be told "clock has been stopped". WTF?

To the person who wrote the following:

Hey CWA/IBEW (I put the IBEW in there)
You asked us to prepare for it, we did...
You asked us to save for it, we did...
You asked us to vote for it, we did - overwhelmingly...
You asked us to rally for it, we did...
"It" is here - now.
Grow a set and pull the trigger! Have all of your recommendations over the past several years just been a waste of energy?

You're right!! Why bother voting? Stop the clock??? It's called working without a contract, plain and simple. How does one stop the clock?

MY cousin is an executive Sales Agent for Microsoft and has traveled from Philly to Basking Ridge to meet with Verizon executives for meetings. Imagine how frustrating it is to arrive and find that the meeting needs to be rescheduled and further that there never seems to be an apology nor any recognitions later when the very same executives are face to face. My daughter had an interview and was called while she was ARRIVING at the gate,they then scheduled it for two hrs later and when she arrived later they again rescheduled her for a week later!..This all began in May and it was supposed to be a summer job. They finally offered her a job After the strike....The blatant disregard of management behooves me...

Hey Verizon management (God it feels really strange using those two words together!)

It isn't he who has little but he who always craves more who is truly poor.

Also, you can't put the same shoe on every foot. Try amending your plan.

Turkey buzzards, Dodo birds, LOL. To my fellow fios techs out in the field, we definately aren't paid enough when it comes to the what we do, the long hours we put in, the filth in some of the houses we go into, the not so safe public housing areas we must work in, alone, the bugs, the heat and cold, the sweltering attics, the crawl spaces with spiders and mice. I know where I came from and I love what I do. I carry a 28' ladder, I don't have a bucket truck and my van doesn't have a/c either , I have never called out once since taking this position. Our work is not like an automobile assembly line, no cookie cutter houses here. Every house is built different, wired in all types of new and old configurations, and yet we manage to do it all. We are the customers, in your face, point of contact. I am all about providing excellent customer service. If we do a bad job, the customer will know first hand, the tv will look fuzzy instead of sharp, the guide won't come up, the VOD and PPV won't work. The FIOS they receive is excellent provided we give them a proper installation with excellent signals readings and take time to show them how to use the remote, their features, set up their internet account, etc. Every installation takes time, and being loaded with a double and a triple or 2 doubles, or 2 triples by yourself can be a challenge. Not all installations take 6-8 hours, but until you get to that customers house and see what you're faced with, the wiring you have to deal with, the changes the customer makes from when they first placed their order weeks ago, you don't know how long that job may take. Sometimes it is feast or famine out in the field, too much work, not enough work. I like to do my triple play and go help another by splitting any additional jobs left in the pool. We can all learn from each other. As for the management and the union and all this 11th hour and stop the clock bargaining, haven't they had 5 years now to work out their differences. The union members voted to strike, what are we waiting for? We all saved and prepared for this day in time, right? Its not like we are privy to what goes on in those talks, but I know what I want, a great paycheck to keep up with the cost of living, after all housing and a gallon of gas are a lot more than they were 5 years ago a 5%+ raise versus a 2% raise every year, continued paid health benefits so if I do get hurt on the job, I'm covered 100%, a great retirement that isn't going to be chipped away at after I retire, etc. Some of us worked in the business office too, or what is left of it. Buyouts, firings, temps, management RIFs have all caused a shortage in the already stressed out business office environment. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in that environment. Enough said about that situation. Been there, done that, not going back. As for outsourcing, if any group could be outsourced, it would be the call center employees who would lose out. $28/hr or even starting pay of $13/hr is still a lot more than what a person in India, China or some other developing country would make doing your same job. Customers may have a hard time understanding the dialect, but many of them are highly educated, English is a second language to them and they would be able to replace 6-14 of you with 1 of them. Calls would be answered quickly, the mandatory script would be read, sales would be made accordingly to need, customer service and satisfaction would be Verizon's number one goal, after all, without customers, there would be no Verizon. So if anyone needs to worry about job security, it is the call center employee. We need to do our job right, the first time so that we don't have to worry about being outsourced. We are all at will employees, we can all be replaced, at the will of the company.

Hey CWA!

You asked us to prepare for it, we did...

You asked us to save for it, we did...

You asked us to vote for it, we did - overwhelmingly...

You asked us to rally for it, we did...

"It" is here - now.

Grow a set and pull the trigger! Have all of your recommendations over the past several years just been a waste of energy?

Don't strike for too long. We'll soon need money to buy our Turducken!

And oh yeah, more than 200,000 people have known for more than four years that this date, and what it specifically represents, was coming. Why couldn't negotiations have begun in September 2003? Would it be illegal (or just too sensible) to settle the contract a year or two early? Maybe both sides should be fined $1 million/day for every day that they're late after August 2. That'll learn 'em, huh?

What happened to not working without a contract? Clock stopped? samething... we as union are getting weaker and weaker, why are we giving in again and showing up for work when we are not completly finished

When I was a carney for this silly, silly joke of a corporation, one of the most humorous things that I experienced on a regular basis was being told by my manager, "We pay you a lot of money..."

Take a shallow look at the average cost in the United States (let alone the reality of living in the urban/suburban eastern U.S.) of purchasing an average home, insuring and maintaining it; purchasing an average automobile or two, insuring and maintaining them; putting your two average children through their two average colleges, clothing them, feeding them; enjoying an average vacation or two plus countless additional average things that are fundamental necessities of everyday life. You'll easily find that you can't very well afford very many of these average things at all! The embarrassingly simple point of all this is that in reality, Verizon associate employees aren't even paid average money, let alone "a lot of money." To recap, if a person can't comfortably afford 100% of the average things mentioned above, they're simply being paid a below average income.

Speaking of managers, in the rest of corporate America, one isn't appointed a manager simply on the basis that they regularly, and quite often fraudulently, sold the most unwilling customers the largest, most unaffordable package of services. In the rest of corporate America, one becomes a manager because they earned a college degree in management, possibly with honors, were required to display quality, universally accepted management skills and tendencies and had read a dozen or so Peter Drucker books. If Verizon made a practice of securing true quality management candidates and allowed them to perform their duties in a calm, professional, normal, rational, ethical manner, the corporation would be in the Fortune top three instead of outside the top ten. Another plus would be the ability to properly pronounce simple words such as, "ask."

Regarding the almost totally nad-less CWA, the membership overwhelmingly approved a strike. Why have the vote if you don't intend to fulfill the members' wishes? C'mon! We wanna go to the beach!!!!!

The company has proven,,once again, that it has no backbone. Management can expect more RIF's, increased healthcare contributions, and larger salary and bonus increases to the top executives. We'll probably see a greater effort by Verizon to sell off territories that have low population density where FIOS will never see the light of day.
Congratulations to the union. I hope your membership continues to receive no cost healthcare, a decent salary increase, and an open door to allow organization of VZB and VZW associates.
The length of the contract will probably provide a glimpse of what the fuure holds. If it's a 3 year deal it would coincide with the timeline Verizon has announced to complete the bulk of the FIOS build. August 2011 would set the stage for a war between VZ and the union.
I wonder what surprises this contract will hold for new associate hires after August 2008. Probably no protections at all. The Union has shown time and time again that they will forfeit future bargaining power by selling out the future membership to preserve the little power they have in the present.
One thing is for sure....both the VZ top executives and senior CWA and IBEW leadership laugh all the way to the bank while riding the backs of the front line workers.

The Unions fear the current economy and would rather take the meager settlement from management than put their necks on the line for all of us. There is a reason we are all getting bilked by big oil and big business, it's primarily because the unions no longer have any balls to do what is right, thanks again for not walking out at the expense of the American worker, welcome back to the days of the robber barrons and 2 class system, and let the robber barrons continue to cut jobs, hike cost of living, cut health care, cut pensions, outsource work across the globe at the expense of the slave labor they seek, thanks CWA & IBEW for being MOOT.

Give and You will get. Thank you to all for trusting in each other and also realize that we ALL will win together. UNITED we STAND d i v i d e d we'll never mind not anyone here will fall. GOD BLESS and remember it takes everyone to make it work! THERE IS NO I IN TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It amazes me the (union) people that either resign from the union or say they are going to work the strike because "they got bills" Yea, we ALL got bills to pay. Two words: Emergency Fund. You've had how many years to save up for a possible strike? Not to mention union or not you should have some money saved for emergencies. If you don't have enough money saved to last 2 or 3 weeks but can drive a C or E class Benz then something is definately off. The more you make the more you spend but just good old common financial sense 101 is to have about 3-6 months of ALL expenses saved up. Of course things can come up for all of us but alot of well paid union employees also need to check your spending & LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS. DON'T CROSS THE PICKET LINE! Your 2 or 3 week paycheck wont last nearly as long as your reputation as a SCAB. If you enjoy the pay that the UNION "fought for" not what was "given" to us by the company then support the union. If it was up to the company to "give us" pay we'd be making what Comcast & Cox makes & driving up to houses in a Subaru with a ladder rack.

The Union was all talk and no walk.

so did the big talking union aka slug protectors talk the talk and walk ?

cry a river you make 30+ dollars an hour. get medical dental and vision for 0.00 a year, get an amazing 401k plan and you want people to feel bad. If its so bad as many of you have cried about leave no one has a gun to your head the door is open trust me

We only gots a few more minutes. Verizon- hang on for the ride cause we aint stoppin. CWA ALL THE WAY!!!!

I am a rather new employee with only a few years in the company and with the union, but in such a short time i have fastly learned that VZ has got to be one of the most mismanaged companies in the world. I thought that it couldn't get eny worse than the last company I worked for but I was way wrong. I greatly support the Union and what it stands for and what it is trying to accomplish. I know that going out on strike isn't always the best solution to things but right now it seems like a fitting solution to solving all the problems we are having at the barganing table. So to all the management out there and others who say we are fools for doing so, suck a root. You know darn well that you could never do our jobs, atleast not right and I look forward to coming back and soaking up the overtime you leave behind for all us techs, even if it means cleaning up after you like a bunch of babies. So to all you Union peeps out there "HOLD WHAT YOU GOT!" cause we're all in this together.

It sounds like you are begging for an office job! Does anyone force you to get up every day and work at Verizon- NO. Go work somewhere else if it is so bad. If you are doing your job and are where you should be then you should not be worried about GPS. As you stand there and wait for systems to come back up, aren't you getting paid, I used to laugh as a tech when that would happen? I am so sick of hearing technicians complain about how bad they have it. We are all fortunate to be employeed at Verizon. Take a look around, its not as bad as you think! PS. Its not Verizon's fault that people leave dog crap in their yards and have dirty houses. Is the Union negotiating for Verizon to hire Merry Maids and Local Landscapers to clean homes before we install service? Is that the hold-up on an agreement??!!

Whatever happened to caring about the employee? Did you ever think that the unwillingness to work was because we are unappreciated by management? I have worked in a call center for well over 10 years and you wouldn't believe how horribly we are treated. Both from the customer and the managers. You never know your work schedule more than 3 weeks in advance and you can never plan anything a month in advance. So, you go through life scheduling, rescheduling, canceling, and missing appointments, holidays, children's games, shows. There is also the unplanned:"needs of the business" overtime to account for. Never mind that you must pick up your children or even make that after work appointment. The managers calculate your every minute, your every word. They, in fact are people who have never had to take call after irate call after call ,,,but they judge and and threaten your livelihood with suspensions regularly, just because someone didn't like the tone of your voice. Never mind that you've had that tone for 50 of your 60 years. Respect is nil- you are called out of the bathroom over the PA system to "make your position ready".. You have no time to cough, sneeze, drink or ever finish a sentence with your coworker for they too are taking calls and are NEVER on the same 15 min break or lunch schedule as you. Unlike the Phillipines or India; there are no lounges, massages, ping pong tables, cafeteria, yoga infused resting areas. Noone is interested in relieving your stress. Instead you will find, poor working conditions, filth and debris everywhere, filth in the kitchen areas, as well as old, slow, computers overladen with software that lenghtens your access time to over 9 systems that must be viewed in order to give a half way decent answer to an irate customer that your company has f'd over. How about labeling entire areas as "cable failure" when in fact we are the ones that brought the city down while we install fios? Earphones aren't even availble, nor are cleaning supplies for the endless times that you must change desk positions for working computers or telephones or team manager changes that occur almost every 3 weeks due to manager's whimsy. These are indeed the modern day sweat shops and I know them because my mom worked in one. This is Verizon.

LETS GO CWA THANKYOU FOR ALL YOU GOT US

WE WILL ALWAYS WIN AS WE HAVE IN THE PAST JUST HANG IN THE FIGHT

most management employees can't do our job not even close.