WASHINGTON-Contract negotiations between union representatives and Verizon Wireless, which to date have been overshadowed by labor talks involving workers employed by the parent landline company, apparently have hit a snag and stolen the spotlight.
Talks are scheduled to resume Wednesday in New Jersey to hammer out a new Verizon Wireless labor deal, which expired Aug. 1. Verizon Wireless has 51 cell site and switch technician workers in lower Manhattan in New York who are represented by the Communications Workers of America, a number dwarfed by the 78,000 unionized Verizon wireline employees.
CWA on Tuesday took out an ad in the New York Times and staged a rally in front of a Verizon Wireless store in Chicago (site of the CWA convention) to voice their grievances about Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 mobile-phone carrier in the nation.
Neither CWA nor Verizon Wireless would identify issues in the labor dispute, though they are believed to include job security and benefits.
CWA calls Verizon Wireless anti-union. “The company has not been living up to its agreement,” said Candace Johnson, a CWA spokeswoman. To underscore her point, Johnson contrasted the 51 Verizon Wireless union workers with the 17,000 Cingular Wireless workers who are unionized.
“Those negotiations continue,” said Jim Gerace, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless.
Simultaneously, CWA is in the midst of sometimes-tense negotiations with Verizon Communications Inc. on a contract for 78,000 workers along the East Coast. This contract expired Aug. 2.
The wireless and wireline contract talks are on separate tracks, though the same federal mediator-Peter Hurtgen-oversees them.
The question now is whether wireless labor-management talks will impact CWA landline negotiations with Verizon Communications, which have been characterized as progressing.
Verizon Communications does not believe the two contract negotiations should be linked, but it said CWA could certainly try to link them if it chose to.
“They are separate agreements with the only common element being the name Verizon, but they are separate companies,” said Eric Rabe, spokesman for Verizon Communications.
Separately, CWA said Tuesday that five of the Democratic presidential candidates support its position in the negotiations with Verizon.
“The five Democratic candidates who addressed CWA delegated during the union’s two-day convention in Chicago all pledged their support for Verizon and Verizon Wireless workers who are bargaining for fair contracts and called on Verizon management to settle those contracts now,” said CWA in a statement.
