Verizon relies on remaining employees to perform new tasks as strike drags on
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While unionized Verizon workers continue to strike into a fourth week, non-union employees and contractors are filling in, Quartz reports.
Quartz reporter Hanna Kozlowska ordered Verizon’s FiOS service, and the installation was carried out by these nonstriking employees. “Several hours into the installation, one of the technicians casually dropped that he was actually a programmer, an IT specialist who normally works at an office in a different part of the country, and his partner, who climbed the telephone pole in my backyard, was a lawyer, a lobbyist for Verizon,” Kozlowska wrote. “Both are in their 50s.”
Striking Verizon employees belong to the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The strike started in April, and significant bargaining blocks include healthcare coverage and outsourcing call-center jobs overseas. As of May 1, Verizon had stopped funding the striking workers’ health insurance plans.
“We know the strike causes many challenges for all of our employees, but we have to remember that our customers rely on us 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Tami Erwin, president of Verizon’s consumer and mass business unit, in a Verizon press release last week.
Besides lawyers, accountants and HR specialists are helping with installation and repair issues, Quartz reports. They go through two weeks of training, learning how to handle fiber optic cables, troubleshoot equipment and climb telephone poles. Between 15,000 and 20,000 employees have been trained to replace the nearly 40,000 striking workers, according to Verizon.
“Are they going to be as good as our experienced technicians that are normally out there who have been doing this for years? No, of course not,” Ray McConville, a Verizon spokesman, told Quartz. “But given the circumstances we think that they are doing a great job.”
The unions told the Philadelphia Inquirer that using less-experienced employees to handle heavy machinery and to hang cables was dangerous, and that basic safety practices were not being followed.
“Union line personnel who perform potentially dangerous jobs at Verizon start their careers with an intensive monthlong training course, receive specialized instruction for specific tasks, and then work closely with experienced techs for three to five years before they’re ready to handle all aspects of the work,” the Communications Workers of America union said in a statement, Fortune reports.
