Verizon Strike Hits Westminster

Outside the Verizon Communications Inc. offices on Main Street in Westminster Thursday, Frank Ridgeway and Steven Leferre could be seen pacing up and down the sidewalk for hours wearing signs of protest.

“CWA on strike against Verizon’s corporate greed,” Leferre’s sign read.

Ridgeway and Leferre, two local Verizon employees, are among the 45,000 unionized employees in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions who are on strike this week because of failed contract negotiations.

According to The Baltimore Sun, that number includes some 4,000 Maryland employees. 

“We’re just fighting for our benefits,” Ridgeway said. “It’s the benefits that the company gave us when we started here, and now they want to take them away...We’re not asking for some big raise.”

According to Verizon, the corporation’s contract with those employees expired Sunday, Aug. 7, at midnight.

The contract covered approximately 45,000 wireline employees represented by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in nine states across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, along with those employees in the Washington, D.C., area.

“Today, most union-represented employees pay nothing for health insurance premiums at Verizon," the company's website states. "The company is proposing that its union-represented employees pay a portion of their health care premiums, much like the majority of other Verizon employees.”

The company went on to call the old contracts the "product of a bygone era."

"Many of the provisions were written decades ago—long before the Internet and the mobile phone—when we were a regulated monopoly facing no competition, stringent rate regulation and guaranteed rates of return," the company stated. "The contracts were never meant to cover a highly competitive landscape where profitability is no longer guaranteed, consumers are gradually shifting from landline to wireless phones and health care costs are skyrocketing.”  

However Ridgeway and Leferre expressed frustration with the company.

Ridgeway, who is a cable splicer and who has worked for Verizon for 17 years, said he feels cheated by the system.

“My complaint is that the company I work for is profitable. Why is it that they had to take away my healthcare?” he asked. “It’s not going to make anyone’s phone bill go down. It’s not going to transfer to the customer. So where are those savings going to go?”

Leferre, who has been with the company 15 years, echoed those sentiments.

 “Our CEOs already make millions,” Leferre said.

According to the men, the union has scheduled picketers on Main Street throughout the day. 

Yet both expressed concern over how the continued strike could affect customers. 

“I hope that we aren’t on strike too long. I know our customers need their service,” Leferre said. “I know cooler heads will prevail and that they will come up with a fair settlement.”

Since the strike went into effect, Verizon has released an official statement announcing the situation while stating that the company is trying to minimize its effects. 

"We are confident that we have the talent and resources in place to meet the needs and demands of our customers," stated Marc C. Reed, Verizon's executive vice-president of human resources, in a press release.

According to the corporate website, in 2010 the company took in nearly $107 billion in annual revenue. In addition, it was ranked 16 on the Fortune 500 list in 2011.

Verizon employees 196,000 people, with 30 percent of its employees unionized.