Regional Bargaining Report # 28

CWA District 1/IBEW Local 2213 and IBEW New England Regional Committees met with the Company today at the Rye Town Hilton in Rye, NY. We first met with the union committee to finalize our counter proposal. AT 1 PM, the union and the company met and the union presented several counter proposals to the company. The Union tried to make proposals that would jump start these negotiations and help to generate momentum. We recessed and waited until late this evening when the company responded to our proposals.

The news is not good. We were in a “time will tell” mode yesterday to see if the company was serious about negotiating a fair contract. Tonight, we got the answer to our question: “Will the company finally come to the table and begin bargaining with a commitment to negotiate a fair contract ”  The answer is NO. There is no commitment from the company to try and bargain with your unions. This company only wants major concessions from your Unions. We will not allow them to destroy your “Middle Class” status. We will not allow this company to strip away the benefits that we have gained over 50 years.  

Your Unions helped this company when they were NY Telephone and New England Telephone to merge and become NYNEX. This Union helped this company when they were NYNEX and Bell Atlantic to merge to become Verizon. They needed the help of your Unions to help convince the politicians that these mergers would be good for the public. We helped this company become this powerful corporation. We watched as NNYEX and Verizon poured money from the landline side into the Wireless side to build their Wireless Network.

This is one Company - VERIZON – an extremely profitable company.

We will not allow this company to now try and destroy us and that is what they are trying to do at the bargaining table. They are trying to take away our collective bargaining rights.

The only company proposal that they have agreed to withdraw from the table is wages that are linked to your appraisals. I must remind everyone that the company has no proposals on the table to give you any wages at all. Every company proposal is to give something back to the company. In order to keep some of our benefits we have to give away one of the benefits we have today.

The company still has all of their retrogressive demands back on the table.

We must step up our fight. We told the company tonight that our members are prepared to fight to hell freezes over to secure a fair contract and your bargaining team is prepared to bargain for as long as it takes to secure a fair contract. We will take this fight to the public and we will raise the stakes. We will make this the battleground fight for the Middle class. Verizon will be the target for every union member and every middle class family. We will not allow this very profitable company to destroy the Middle Class.  

Our members, their friends, their neighbors and their relatives are all joining this fight against Verizon to save the Middle Class. More and more Unions are joining our fight to help us fight this greedy Corporation. Union members as well as non- union members are joining this fight.  
 
Verizon you will hear us !!
 
It’s time to fight back!
 
We will not allow VERIZON to destroy the Middle Class
 
Stay Strong – Stay United
 
Mobilize! – Mobilize! – Mobilize!