Regional Bargaining Report

 Thursday, August 11, 2011   

The IBEW System Council T6 Business Managers from MA & RI, CWA District 1, IBEW Local 2213, and IBEW New England Regional Committees met with the Company on Thursday in Rye, NY.

 

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.

At this point in time 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 YOU.  We cannot allow this company to strip away the benefits that the unions 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 must 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.  

 

If and when any developments occur, we will pass that message on!