海角大神

Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers on the East Coast went on strike Wednesday to protest an eight-month impasse with the company over their contracts.

From Virginia to Massachusetts, the company鈥檚 landline and cable workers who are members of one of two unions 鈥撀爐he Communications Workers of America (CWA) or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 鈥撀爓alked off their jobs to bring attention to what they call greedy corporate practices by a profitable company cutting back pay and benefits for the people who helped build it.

CWA says that while Verizon has brought in $39 million in profits over the last three years, it has cut its US staff and moved 5,000 jobs to nations where labor is cheaper, such as Mexico and the Philippines, and has made plans to move more. Verizon also is outsourcing jobs, including installing and maintaining telephone poles, to lower-wage, non-union contractors; consolidating its call centers, which makes it harder for workers to get to work; and requiring wireline technicians to work away from their homes for up to two months at a time.

鈥樷�楾he main issues are job security and that they want to move workers miles and miles away,鈥欌�� said Isaac Collazo, a Verizon employee who has worked replacing underground cables in New York City for nearly 19 years, reported The Boston Globe.

Though this isn鈥檛 the first time tens of thousands of Verizon workers have walked off their jobs in protest 鈥� the latest strikes were in 2011, ending without a contract resolution 鈥� it is one of the nation鈥檚 largest in recent years. It comes at a time when national tensions over an eroding middle class and corporate greed have helped shape the the presidential election.

鈥淚 think what they鈥檙e fighting for is really the type of labor market that Americans believe should exist,鈥� says Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, in an interview with 海角大神, 鈥渁 labor market where there鈥檚 some commitment by a company to its workers, to a community, and to being a good corporate citizen.鈥�

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who has made social inequality a central plank of his campaign platform,聽visited Verizon workers picketing聽in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Wednesday. He called on the company to negotiate a fair contract and聽criticized Verizon before an address to the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO鈥檚 annual convention in Philadelphia last week.聽

鈥淰erizon wants to take American jobs 鈥� call center jobs 鈥� out of this country and bring them abroad where people will be paid pennies an hour. That is unacceptable,鈥� said Senator Sanders.

In full-page newspaper ads and on its website, Verizon cites rising healthcare costs and points out that the employees negotiating their contracts on average have wage and benefits packages worth $130,000 a year. Almost all of these employees support the company鈥檚 declining wireline business, says Verizon, which in 2015 brought in 29 percent of the company鈥檚 revenue but less than 7 percent of the operating income, suggesting that its impact on the company鈥檚 profit is low.

鈥淟egacy constraints that may have made sense in the Ma Bell era of phone booths and Princess phones don鈥檛 make sense in today鈥檚 digital world with high-speed connectivity and dynamic customer demands,鈥� said Marc Reed, Verizon鈥檚 chief administrative officer, in a statement online.

鈥淎 strike in this case is not going to change the issues on the table that need to be addressed. Union leaders need to take an honest look at what Verizon is proposing,鈥� he said.

But worker advocates such as Dr. Bernard say what the company is proposing is not enough, given that the workers negotiating contracts helped make the company successful.

鈥淭his is not a company that鈥檚 pleading, 'Gee workers, can you please tighten your belts because we鈥檙e having such a hard time, it鈥檚 a recession, or we鈥檙e buying new technology,' 鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just, 'Hey, we鈥檙e making a lot of money, we don鈥檛 think you deserve any of it, and goodbye.' What should workers do given that situation?鈥�

According to the Globe, the workers negotiating contracts are installers, customer service employees, repairmen, and other service workers in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland,聽Massachusetts,聽New Jersey,聽New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. They work for Verizon鈥檚 wireline business, which provides fixed-line phone services and FiOS Internet service.