Verizon to union: The grill must go, or else
In recent days, sparks are still flying over a controversial “Unify Main Street” BBQ dinner attended by several community groups that gathered with Communication Workers of America Local 2204 near Verizon headquarters on Nov. 3 in support of a fair contract for Verizon employees and for preserving middle-class jobs in the Shenandoah Valley.
In a clear act of retaliation against the union’s involvement in the community event, a Verizon manager has demanded that the BBQ grill used to cook the group’s food be removed from the company’s property before Thanksgiving.
“I just learned from a union newsletter this morning that, when my union friends got to work last week, their boss gave them an ultimatum,” said Donald Wilson Bush, a member of several Occupy Wall Street/Unify Main Street groups forming in the Valley, “Either they move the grill away from Verizon property by Thanksgiving or else Verizon management will throw it away in the company dumpster.”
Presented in the questionable context of a concern for “worker safety,” this demand on the part of local Verizon management to remove the grill followed publication of a Letter to Editor on Tuesday, Nov. 15 sent to the Staunton News Leader by Harry J. Mitchell, Verizon’s director of public relations in Richmond.
In his letter, Mitchell referred to the community-sponsored BBQ event as filled with “empty rhetoric,” and argued against the CWA’s proposition that middle-class jobs in America are due, at least in part, to years of successful contract negotiation between leaders of organized labor and corporate management.
“Mr. Mitchell is certainly entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts,” Bush replied. “Clearly, as any fair study of labor history will prove, the upward trajectory of middle-class growth in America shows that he is absolutely mistaken about the positive impact that organized labor relations have had on the livelihoods of working class people all around the world.”
“I was shocked to learn that the BBQ grill in question has been on company property for at least 12 years and has been used by management and associates alike for different events,” Bush continued. “It has never been a safety concern before. This is simply what happens when you try to unify groups of people in the community like we did in support of CWA’s current campaign against corporate greed.”
The BBQ grill in question will be given to a family of Verizon customers living in Staunton after it is removed from Verizon property this week. The family receiving the grill says that it will be used again in future community-sponsored BBQ events that support middle-class jobs.
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Harry Mitchell from Verizon here. This blog post’s feeble attempt to tie a managment decision to part with cooking grills at several company work locations throughout the region to an earlier union/Occupy cookout in Staunton is real “Conspiracy Theory” stuff. The only problem with that: There was no relation between the two.
In addition, the characterization of my letter in the News-Leader in this post is off. Let your readers be the judge; here’s the text of my letter in the paper:
Your recent story (“Verizon workers, protesters, seek to ‘Unify Main Street,’” Nov. 4) unfortunately presented a one-sided view of labor negotiations between Verizon’s wireline business and the Communication Workers of America. Here’s the other side.
First, it’s plain that the Occupy movement doesn’t have the benefit of any information about the issues in this negotiation except what they’ve been told by the CWA. That information is obviously slanted and largely inaccurate.
Over the past 10 years, Verizon has lost half of its wireline business to largely nonunion competitors. We must have labor agreements that recognize this reality so that we can make the wireline part of the business more competitive.
Doing so can preserve and even grow good middle-class jobs.
The fact is Verizon is asking for meaningful contract changes that are strikingly similar to what CWA has already agreed to at other companies.
In the case of health care, for example, our union-represented employees pay nothing toward their premiums. How many of the Occupy movement — or Staunton/Augusta County residents — can say the same?
A Verizon technician in western Virginia makes about $81,000 a year in wages and overtime, and has benefits valued at $41,000 a year. These are solid middle-class jobs and, when we have reached a new agreement with the union, they will continue to be solid middle-class jobs.
Union leadership also wrongly claims that Verizon isn’t paying its fair share of taxes, citing a report issued by a group whose 13-member board of directors includes the CWA’s international president and seven other national union leaders.
In fact, Verizon’s federal tax liability in 2010 alone was $2.2 billion.
Over the past five years, Verizon has paid more than $7.5 billion in federal and state income taxes alone, net of refunds. In addition, Verizon pays other taxes such as property taxes, taxes on gross receipts, franchise, payroll and other taxes.
Union barbecues and hollow rhetoric won’t preserve the middle class. Meaningful negotiations will. More facts on this labor negotiation are available at http://www.verizonbargaining facts.com.
Main Street responds to Mr. Mitchell
December 2, 2011
I wish to show no disrespect to Mr. Mitchell’s opinion regarding what I am sure he considers to be a fair assessment of the economic predicament presently facing America’s middle class.
Moreover, I am sure he takes his job seriously, and I applaud his desire to do his job well spinning the corporate message sent down from Verizon’s corporate HQ. He has most certainly earned his credentials as a public relations professional on the merits of excelling in his field.
However, not discounting Mr. Mitchell’s value to the corporate boardroom that pays his salary, the sleeping giant of Verizon’s customer base in the American middle class has been awakened to the truth that his words about our economic condition ring hollow in the face of facts over which his spin machine (not to mention his own cunning and slash of a corporate subsidized pen) has little or no control.
This loss of control in keeping his company’s customers ignorant to the facts of CWA Union contract negotiations may come as a surprise to his employers and may even present Mr. Mitchell himself with certain levels of emotional consternation from not being able to keep us forever in the dark, but insulting our intelligence to those facts is hardly worthy of one who claims to enlighten us to their true meaning.
Mr. Mitchell uses words like “feeble attempt” and “hollow rhetoric” to either discredit the efforts of working class families in the Shenandoah Valley who dare to make a public presentation of the facts pertaining to our current economic situation (all the while eating excellent, homemade BBQ). Or perhaps he simply wishes to diminish, as best he can, the rising tide of awareness in thousands of middle class neighborhoods that giant corporations like Verizon and their elite executives are not paying a fair share of taxes into the common trust while the rest of us in the working class continue to struggle to pay ours.
Can Mr. Mitchell be so sure that his initial statements are accurate and true—that “the Occupy movement doesn’t have the benefit of any information about the issues in this negotiation except what they’ve been told by the CWA. That [our] information is obviously slanted and largely inaccurate.”?
How does he know what we know and what we don’t know? Does Mr. Mitchell work in Staunton? Does he live on our streets? Without sharing in the daily mix of local interactions between Union workers and Verizon management out on Christians Creek Road, how can he be so sure that there was “no relation between a management decision to part with cooking grills at several company work locations throughout the region to an earlier union/Occupy cookout in Staunton.”?
These written attempts on the part of Mr. Mitchell’s condescending strategy to paint the Verizon customer base in our small city as either ignorant or misinformed will only serve to unify an enlightened Main Street constituency in opposition to his plan.
Like the man who unwittingly digs himself deeper into a hole, Mr. Mitchell will keep trying to convince us out here on Main Street that Verizon’s beef is with the union and that we should just butt out.
But we know better. The historical truth is this: one hundred years ago, the American middle class needed the labor and trade unions to peacefully balance the negotiating table between big banks, robber barons, and corporate bullies on one side, with violent, organized Bolsheviks on the other.
One hundred years later, the middle class desperately needs the unions once again to help us re-write the rules regulating a global network of economic systems that have been slowly co-opted by the über rich over several decades at the expense of the working class and the poor.
While Mr. Mitchell and his boardroom masters may be able to summarily dismiss a few thousand OWS anarchists and unemployed millennials railing against corporate greed today, are they so sure that belittling their customer base is the best way to handle millions of middle class working families preparing to unify Main Street against corporate greed tomorrow?
Donald Wilson Bush
Verizon Customer
Staunton, Virginia
donbush@verizon.net
Harry Mitchell’s attempt to portray the benefits of Verizon’s unionized workers as excessive reminds me of corporate America’s overall push over the last 30 years to make the rest of us jealous of our union colleagues.
I’ve never been a union member and until a couple years ago I never gave organized labor much thought. But the Occupy movement has helped to raise my consciousness and show me just how important unions are to everyone in the 99%. Not only did they give us all the 40-hour week but for a century unions have set the bar for all Americans to have better pay, benefits and working conditions.
Currently, as a self-employed business owner, I don’t have any health insurance at all. But I don’t resent that Verizon workers have a fair plan. They work hard and they deserve it. Besides, the company can well afford it. Verizon is so profitable that it can pay its CEO $55,000 per day. That’s more than my whole family makes in one year!
And what about all that money from unpaid taxes? Mr. Mitchell’s claims ring hollow. According to Americans for Tax Justice, from 2008-2010, the company’s effective tax rate was actually negative: -2.9%. And if Verizon could move their American jobs to low-wage countries like the Phillipines or India, I’ll bet that they would. That could help them pay their CEO even more!
So Mr. Mitchell is not going to split this non-unionized worker off from his union friends. Instead, Verizon’s attitude has made me all the more willing to support the union’s efforts to protect good American jobs.
For too long, the top 1% has pitted middle-class workers against each other: union vs. non-union, native vs. immigrant, black vs. white, white collar vs. blue collar. It’s the old strategy of divide-and-rule and it’s been a winning ruse for management. But letting ourselves get pitted against each other been disastrous for ordinary Americans, who have seen our real incomes drop over the last few years.
So, while Verizon’s CEO can buy a whole parking lot of Rolls Royces or drink Dom Perignon from the faucet if he wants, the rest of America is suffering.
Now it’s time for all of us in the 99% to start working together to protect the middle class. We’ll have to take down walls built by big corporations to do that. But it’s the only way we can get a fair economy and an honest government free of undue influence by big corporations. And these may be the only things that will get America out of the Great Recession.
Of course, American workers uniting is the last thing that big corporations want.
For my part, as a non-union worker, I support Verizon workers 100% to protect their hard-won benefits and protections. Yes, for fairness to them, but also for my own self-interest. I know that when union workers thrive I will thrive too.
While big corporations ultimately want to push all US workers down to the China-India price, unions help push us all back up. We need to stop our economy’s race to the bottom and start moving US workers back up again. It’s the American way.
Give the workers a fair contract they service the companies customers and fix the network trouble… They deserve to have a new contract!