Alternative Visions – Communications Workers’ Historic Strike Against Verizon to Save Jobs – 05.13.16

Jack Rasmus welcomes CWA Local 1400 president and union bargaining committee member, Don Trementozzi, to report the facts about the current Verizon strike, now in its fifth week, by 40,000 CWA union members, from New England to Virginia. Don explains the main issue, and union demand ,to save 20,000 union call center workers’ jobs that Verizon wants to offshore from the US to the Philippines and elsewhere, where the company pays workers only $1.78/hr., despite having made $18.6 billion in profits last year. Violence by replacement-scab workers hired by the company in the US and in the Philippines are described by Trementozzi. Jack notes the recent Pew Study showing incomes of middle class US workers now falling in 203 of 226 regions in the US, and how the ‘triple onslaught’ by companies—job offshoring, creating tens of millions of part time-temp-contract low pay jobs, and now the ‘gig’ economy—has been devastating US jobs and middle class incomes, that have been declining the past six years as companies like Verizon have been distributing $5 trillion in dividends and stock buybacks to their wealthy investors since 2010.  Trementozzi describes the growing support for the strikers throughout the northeast and internationally, in this historic strike to save jobs and call a halt to the ‘triple onslaught’ destroying US middle class incomes.

Guest: Don Trementozzi is president of CWA local 1400 in New England and a member of the union’s regional bargaining committee.  For more information about the strike and negotiations go to www.cwa.org or to www.cwalocal1400.org websites.