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Verizon M.O.: Record Profits, Heartless Layoffs

February 8, 2012

More than 330 New Jersey Verizon technicians got unwanted news Feb. 3 with the announcement by the company that they would soon be out of a job.

The workers, who are officially employed by Verizon Connected Solutions, a Verizon subsidiary, represent nearly the entire VCS unit in the state. The employees are slated to lose their jobs by April 3.

East Windsor, N.J., Local 827 Business Manager William Huber says the news came as a total shock:

In more than eight months of bargaining, Verizon never said once that they wanted to lay these people off. No one saw this coming.

The workers maintain copper landlines in New Jersey. The company says the layoffs are necessary in face of declining landline use, but Huber says the company has other motives:

They are trying to intimidate Local 827 members in the core Verizon facilities. This is about increasing Verizon’s leverage in bargaining.

VCS workers are covered by a separate contract that that does not have a job security clause. With only 20 employees now left in that unit, the jobs of core Verizon technicians who were hired between 2003 and 2007 are now at risk in case of more layoffs.

Says Huber:

They are coming after the entire local, using our members’ jobs as a bargaining chip.

Negotiations between the telecommunications giant and the IBEW and CWA remain deadlocked, with Verizon putting the same package of givebacks back on the table, including eliminating the company’s pension plan, giving management more leeway to outsource jobs and dramatically increasing health care premiums and deductibles, that led to last summer’s strike.

More than 45,000 workers from New England to Virginia struck for nearly two weeks last August to protest the company’s draconian cutback demands.

The IBEW and CWA called off the strike after Verizon agreed to extend the expired contract.

The company made record profits in 2011, raking in more than $2 billion, while using tax loopholes to get out of paying any corporate income tax.

Says Huber:

This has been one of the most downright nastiest fights I’ve ever seen in my career. It's not about money, it's all about greed. The company has refused to budge an inch.