Regional Bargaining Report # 54

Saturday May 7, 2016

Following our meeting with Verizon on Monday, the CWA District 1/IBEW Local 2213 and IBEW New England Regional Committees met with the Company in off record discussions over call sharing, The union committee continued to meet throughout the week to discuss our next steps.

On May 5, CWA members and allies brought the Verizon strike to the company’s shareholder meeting in Albuquerque, NM. Dozens of strikers flew out from the East Coast and were met by their sisters and brothers in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Over 250 people protested outside the meeting. Inside, CWA activists spoke on shareholder resolutions and presented more than 300,000 petitions from customers to CEO Lowell McAdam.

Later, 15 union members and community supporters were arrested, after they draped a 70-foot banner reading "Verizon: Good Jobs, No Greed" across Rio Grande Blvd and then sat down under the banner to block traffic.

"As long as corporate executives put short-term profits ahead of the workers who make those profits possible and the communities they promised to serve, the calls for a change of course at Verizon will only grow stronger," said protestor Bianca Cunningham before she was arrested alongside fourteen other protestors for civil disobedience. Cunningham is a former Verizon Wireless worker who was fired in September while helping her fellow employees form a union.

National Day of Action

CWA members, activists and allies held a National Day of Action to focus attention on Verizon's corporate greed. The 39,000 CWA and IBEW members remain on strike, pushing the company to stop offshoring jobs and to keep good jobs in our communities, so customers can get the quality service they deserve.

More than 400 protests were held nationwide, at Verizon Wireless stores and other locations in dozens of cities. In New York City, some 2,000 workers, supporters and elected leaders marched to a Verizon Wireless store on Wall Street.

Read more about the Day of Action and all the latest on the Verizon strike at 

www.facebook.com/standuptoverizon and www.standuptoverizon.com.

Keep the picket lines at Wireless strong, and keep following the scabs. The company will get the message--they will not break us. 

We will win.

Stay strong.

Solidarity forever!