CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

This new year, hang up on Verizon!

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Put your money where your values are and make the switch. Unlike Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless has remained neutral during union organizing campaigns and voluntarily recognizes the union, when a majority of workers sign union authorization cards. When switching to Cingular Wireless, CWA members receive a 5 percent discount on contracts with proof of union membership. Click here for more information.

Still under a contract? Let Verizon know that you disapprove of their anti-union activity. Click here to take a pledge to switch companies immediately upon finishing the terms of your current contract.

December 2006

Verizon Wireless is one of the nation’s largest wireless providers, serving over 53 million customers nationwide. However, with annual revenues of over $90 billion, Verizon wireless workers still lack basic workplace rights and adequate healthcare and retirement benefits. In an effort to prevent worker solidarity and equal protection across the board, management for Verizon Communications Inc. argues that its wireless workers are separate from the greater company and therefore do not fall under union protection. While both landline and wireless workers perform the similar tasks of taking customer calls, processing orders and making sales they are systematically not treated equally. Unlike the 65,000 Verizon landline workers who enjoy the benefits of union protection by CWA, Verizon wireless workers are left to fend for themselves.

Without union protection, decisions regarding pay raises, advancement and job security are subject to management entirely. Unlike landline workers, who enjoy the protection of a CWA union contract, wireless workers are forced to deal with the subjectivity and favoritism of management in making these decisions. “We are all at-will workers here” Verizon wireless worker Thai Nyguen explains, “You can be fired at any time for no reason.” Without a union contract, individuals have no formal means for appealing unfair disciplinary actions, nor ability to negotiate better wages, benefits or job security.

A struggle to unionize

Over the past 10 years wireless workers have struggled to unionize, but have been met with great hostility by management. Those who have participated in these efforts have routinely been fired, laid off, harassed and intimidated by their supervisors. Between 2000 and 2004 call centers that demonstrated growing union interest by workers were shutdown, putting 2,000 workers in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey out of work. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in both New York and Boston have issued a series of complaints over the company’s refusal to bargain, their illegal interference with employee discussions regarding pay and treatment and for the retaliatory firing of union supporters. While Verizon Wireless management has settled with the NLRB and “promised not to interfere with, restrain or coerce its employees”, their wireless workers still remain without a union.

Join CWA and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) locals nationwide to mobilize against Verizon Wireless and their union-busting tactics. Labor organizations across the country are organizing their members to “Hang up on Verizon.” As wireless customers you have the power to push for greater corporate accountability.

Click here for more information about the struggles of Verizon wireless workers and to get involved in future campaigns.

—Talia Reyes

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