You will be receiving a letter from the company in the next few days laying out its agenda for bargaining. The letter is not specific in so much as it doesn’t list any demands. Nonetheless, it is clear that they want you to believe that they have some major problems and you have to understand that the solutions must come at yours and your family’s expense. See, in a world where there are choices, the choice Verizon is telling you they are already making is that they will try and pressure you and extract as much as it can from you, in order to serve their lords on Wall Street. The letter is pure propaganda. There is no real business justification for their demand, only greed.
In this letter they are asking you to keep an “open mind” and to look at it from their perspective, that you are in a new reality, and you should expect and make do with the deterioration of working conditions and quality of life state you are presently in.
This letter is not a hokey we are in all this together letter, although that’s what they want you to believe, because with Verizon we are never in this together. It shouldn’t be that way, but that is the way they want it. There are two boats at Verizon. The yacht for those at the top and the raft for the rest of us. This letter is for you to temper your expectations, right now, because as they are telling you, you don’t deserve anything and they aren’t willing to give you anything. The letter is just another perverse divide and conquer tactic from the playbook that is corporate America.
As I said earlier, this is about choices. Verizon continues to choose NO.
Fios Buildout–NO
Days off on Saturday—NO
Days off in general–NO
Christmas Eve half day off—NO
Trust in their employees—NO
Respect for their employees—NO
Fair contract for employees—NO
Understand that what they are really telling you in the letter is that we are in for a fight. They are telling you that the healthcare benefits that your family relies on is costing this multi-billion dollar corporation too much money, so you have to pay more. They are telling you that they need flexibility because apparently the 35 miles that they can already transfer an employee permanently just isn’t enough, so you will have to move. (Don’t worry about it if you have to move from the home you love, your kids will adjust in a new school system.) They are telling you to be “open minded” yet behind the scenes they have notified the union of their intent to contract out all line work and TRG work, so apparently you need to be open minded enough to have no job. They are telling you that the regulatory environment has changed with the FCC ruling on net neutrality and this will now hamper their ability to build out Fios (Because we all remember the major Fios build out initiatives during the last five years when the regulatory environment was presumably in their favor).
There are two things you can do when you get the letter: Throw it away or read it. I urge you to read it. There is no better mobilization tool than management telling you exactly how they feel about you and your family, and your place in their plans.
This is CWA Local 1103.
Source : CWA LOCAL 1103
