Tensions Increase in the Verizon Strike

A couple days ago we heard news about the recent strike that employees of the wireless company, Verizon Wireless, were leading.  After a couple days of striking, no progress seems to have been made and both sides are at a stand-off.  Right now, both sides of the strike (employees and company leaders) are firing charges at each other with no progress in site.

On one side, the union members are upset saying that managers and non-union employees have been purposely injuring picketers while driving past picket lines.  In one case, a union member had to be hospitalized after being struck in the head by a car’s sideview mirror.

The other side, the managers, complain that there has been an increase in the amount of vandalism and sabotage from finding broken equipment such as purposely cut lines.  Also, reports say that picketers have been preventing replacement workers from entering their job site.

Verizon workers wrote an appeal to congress saying, “We ask you to write Verizon President Lowell McAdam and urge him to respect collective bargaining rights.”.  Workers also say that they are willing to negotiate with Verizon on many of the issues but Verizon has yet to engage in the bargaining.

Early monday morning, reports say that customers have started to call in about service outages and delays so it seems that Verizon is starting to fall and that managers might want to rethink the picketers needs.

Verizon said that their last strike lasted 18 days in 2000 and cost the company around $40 million.