With 5,000 employees in 46 states and an active local market that includes providing Verizon wire-based service, upstate-based Paetec, a so-called “competitive local exchange carrier,” acknowledged Monday that with a prolonged strike, “There”™s certainly the possibility ”¦ we would be affected. But we also have other options.”
Chris Muller, Fairport-based Paetec”™s director of public relations, said, “We can use Verizon or we can use other competitive access providers; multiple vendors can be tapped.” Transmission options span all technologies: copper wire, fiber optic and microwave (wireless).
Muller noted the big carriers like AT&T and Verizon are known as incumbent local exchange carriers, all part of a shift that began in 1996 with the federal Telecom Act, which opened markets to competition and which allows Paetec to become akin to a multiple-listing service.
With 10 employees, Nanuet based Third Eye Technologies Inc. President Steve Alexander said, “As far as I know, Verizon is having a labor issue. The strike has not affected us ”¦ not for now. If the strike goes on and Verizon were to shut down, we and a lot of other people could be affected.”
As of press time, approximately 45,000 workers from Verizon continued their strike over contract negotiations. Verizon serves the corridor from Massachusetts to Virginia. It is the first strike at the company in 11 years and takes place against a backdrop of high-profile union antagonism, notably in statehouse governments, and an army (9.1 percent of the workforce) of unemployed Americans.
The company is requesting $1 billion in worker concessions in the form of reduced benefits and work rules, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said. The workers, who toil mainly in the company”™s wire-line business, are represented by the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
“It is clear that some of the existing contract provisions, negotiated initially when Verizon was under far less competitive pressure, are not in line with the economic realities of business today,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam wrote in a letter Aug. 7 to company management. “As the U.S. automobile industry found out a few years ago, failure to make needed adjustments ”“ when the need for change is obvious ”“ can be catastrophic.”
Bargaining began June 22. The strike began at midnight Aug. 7.
The media war was well under way Aug 8.
“Verizon workers are waiting for management to demonstrate that it”™s ready to bargain,” said Candice Johnson, president of the CWA, referencing a series of what she asserted were Verizon cancellations of negotiating sessions. “In fact, we”™re looking for Verizon to stop canceling bargaining sessions that have been scheduled.”
The CWA asserts that Verizon is demanding some $20,000 in concessions for every worker: “That demand is coming from a $100 billion company, where the top five executives got compensation of $258 million over the past four years. Verizon”™s concession demands would strip away the middle-class standard of living that workers have gained through bargaining over the past 50 years.”
The unions accused Verizon of parroting the state of Wisconsin”™s recent hard-line stand on collective bargaining, saying, “CWA and IBEW have decided to take the unprecedented step of striking until Verizon stops its Wisconsin-style tactics and starts bargaining seriously.”
Verizon said its landline business is declining as customers embrace wireless.
“We need to reach a contract that addresses economic realities,” said Verizon in a prepared statement. “The wire-line business is constantly in decline. In order for Verizon to compete, Verizon and the unions need to make some difficult decisions.”
Verizon seeks to tie pay to performance and require union workers to contribute to health care costs. The company is also seeking to freeze pensions at the end of the year, eliminate the sickness and death benefit program, cut in half the sickness disability benefits from a year to six months and reduce sick time, according to the IBEW.
As for the strike, the phone on your desk and those who work the lines: “We”™re hoping for a speedy resolution,” said Muller.