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Corporate greed versus doing the right thing by your workers is at the heart of the Verizon strike, workers say. Thirty-nine thousand CWA and IBEW workers are in the tenth day of their strike.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is endorsed for president by CWA, and Hilary Clinton spoke to workers on the Verizon picket lines in New York City.
“Brothers and sisters! Thank you for your courage in standing up for justice against corporate greed! Verizon is one of the largest, most profitable corporations in this country. But they refuse to sit down and negotiate a fair contract!” Sanders said.
Hillary Clinton stopped by a Verizon picket line and said Verizon should do the right thing and return to negotiations.
Clinton, unlike Sanders, has also taken money from Verizon—hundreds of thousands of dollars for her campaign and family foundation.
The IBEW’s Myles Calvey says if Verizon was really in financial distress and needed concessions the union would work it out, but Verizon is demanding concessions while racking up immense profits.
“They are going to bring in $132 billion dollars of revenue this year. They claim they’re hurting in the wireline business. They still turned a profit of $1.6 billion. They are averaging $1.8 billion a month for the last 19 months.”
United Flight Attendants Picket Airports in Six Cities
United Airlines flight attendants picketed airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Newark, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Thursday.
AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson says the flight attendants are picketing for a fair contract with the merged United Airlines.
Nelson says amid record profits for the airline flight attendants deserve and expect to share in those profits with an industry leading labor contract.
“We take pride in what we do. But we would like to work for an airline where we can feel pride once again in saying we are United Airline flight attendants. And that will take making sure that the corporation understands it’s our turn. Record profits need to be shared with the front line workers who make United fly.”
AFA-CWA says an intense series of mediation sessions are scheduled over the next month at United.
It is immaterial to the employees how much Verizon’s earnings are/were in the past year….. I REPEAT — THE COMPANY’S FIRST OBLIGATION IS TO SATISFY THE STOCKHOLDERS. If a stockholder sees the Company is not making money and the returns on investment are not satisfactory, they put their money someplace else. STOCKHOLDERS COME FIRST! AND THEN WHERE WOULD THE EMPLOYEES BE…. Out of a job, that’s where!
Verizon employees are handsomely paid for the work that they do, ELSE they could and would go to another employer if they thought they could do better. Why don’t they go? Because they all know they have a darn good deal at Verizon. Most of this unrest is coming from the Union and employees are merely required to pay their dues and follow what the union says.
BERNIE SANDERS knows (or should know) all of this and he is pandering to the Verizon employees, and Hillary is just following the playbook as determined by dear old Bernie. Everyone is aware that Bernie is a socialist, so what else is new.