BY OLGA RODRIGUEZ AND JACOB PERASSO   BROOKLYN, New York--"There is nobody here that feels this is not going to be a successful strike," said one of more than 40 union members on the picket line outside one of the area's largest telephone installation and repair yards. The picket was one of hundreds from Maine to Virginia that went up when 86,000 workers in 12 eastern states and the District of Columbia walked off the job August 6 after the expiration of their contract with Verizon Communications. Verizon was formed through the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Wireless Communications and is now the largest provider of local telephone and wireless service in the nation.
Militant/Jacob Perasso
Communications Workers of America members in Brooklyn, New York, picket Verizon offices August 6. Strike spans the East Coast from Maine to Virginia.

Key issues in the strike are Verizon's expansion of its nonunion wireless operations, outsourcing of work, and forced overtime. The strike is being closely watched in the big-business media because of the union's challenge to the rapid growth of the telecommunications industry that is not organized. Verizon, BellSouth, and SBC are the only three companies with more than 50 percent of the workforce in the CWA or IBEW. Sprint, Worldcom, Nextel, VoiceStream, and other companies in the rapidly growing and profitable industry have few union members.

The New York Times and other pro-company newspapers began pushing Verizon's line that the strike will not affect phone service, due to what they say is a largely automated system. But three days into the strike, Verizon's 30,000 managers doing the struck work are unable to keep up with demands for installation and repair. In New York City, for example, it is estimated that there are 2,600 requests for new telephone installations and 4,500 repair requests daily.

More than 450 workers who do repairs, service, maintenance, and cable and telephone installation for South Brooklyn work at the facility here.

Tony Barone, a service technician, Local 1109 shop steward, and a picket captain, disputed Verizon's claim that service would not be affected by the strike. "There is no automated computer system that can replace us. The 30,000 managers cannot do what 86,000 workers can do." More than one striker added that the computer system is designed to "scrub jobs," which means that even if your phone line has constant static, the computer is programmed with an option to refuse a repair request.

Strike picket lines, which sprang up throughout the states where Verizon is the main carrier, have been spirited and boisterous. According to Times reports on August 7, the first full day of picketing, striking workers blocked the entrances of the main switching facility in Philadelphia, which helped to prevent managers doing struck work from entering the building. The same article reports that strikers also blocked access to Verizon facilities in Delaware. By the second day of the strike some 14,500 union members were on picket lines outside of 550 company buildings.  
 
Job security and union jobs main issues
Barone told the Militant that the main issue for the striking workers is job security. Verizon wants the freedom to force employees to transfer to any of the other locations it services within the 13 states. In their original offer, Verizon proposed that it have the right to transfer up to 10 percent of the workforce each year. This would mean that the company can force workers to move or face being fired.

While press reports said the company was willing to drop this figure down to 4 percent, strikers in Brooklyn said that they did not want the company to be able to move anyone. They explained that under the contract negotiated after Bell Atlantic merged with Nynex in 1997, the company could transfer up to a half a percent of the workers each year.

The strikers explained that this has been an issue for them from the outset, and they had hoped to remove any provision for arbitrary transfer from the new contract, pointing out that the company can move union workers with such a provision to a nonunion job, thus weakening the union.

The company also wants to be able to contract out jobs. Anthony Muzio, a maintenance cable splicer in Brooklyn, offered the example of Time Warner, the television cable giant. "For every Time Warner truck on the road," he said, "there are five contracted trucks doing Time Warner installation." Strikers said that they would not vote to return to work if outsourcing is allowed in any contract proposal. This is a major sticking point for Verizon, which regularly subcontracts out work installing high-speed Internet lines. The announcement on the third day of the strike that Verizon made a deal to acquire NorthPoint Communications, which installs high-speed Internet access lines, for $800 million, gives an indication of Verizon's unwillingness to halt subcontracting. NorthPoint Communications is a nonunion installer.

Most of the strikers in Brooklyn were quick to say the issue in the strike is not wages. At the same time, some spoke to the question of proposed increases in co-payments that workers have to make on their health and dental plans under the company's original offer.

Barone said the union wants to make it easier for the wireless workers, currently nonunion, to join the union if they choose. In an article in the business section of the August 8 Times, entitled, "Communicators Saying Little on Walkout," Seth Schiesel wrote, "The unspoken secret is that the established communications carriers that still have unions basically wish that they did not. And the younger companies that do not have them will do just about anything to keep them away."

One unnamed "Wall Street analyst" was quoted as saying that the cost to the company if a union was organized at Verizon's wireless division would be in the range of $300 million annually. But, the article also explains that Verizon's wireless unit expects to generate $5.5 billion or more in cash flow this year alone. Only a few dozen of Verizon's 30,000 wireless workers are unionized, compared with more than 80 percent of the 120,000 workers employed in the local telephone division.

As the strike continues, telephone workers are organizing rallies and picket lines across New York and in New Jersey. Workers on the picket line in upper Manhattan were confident and spirited in the early hours just after the strike began. Many workers there commented that they had experience in previous strikes and had emerged stronger for their fight.  
 
Violence baiting, court injunctions
From the first day of the strike, Verizon, the cops, and the capitalist media have been on a campaign to violence-bait the strike. Newspapers have echoed company charges that sabotage of cables, lines, and switch boxes had interrupted phone service for residents in the Bronx and parts of Manhattan. The August 9 Times reported that "the most strident and sometimes violent front lines of the walkout have been in New York City and its suburbs." Verizon claims 455 "strike-related incidents" of assault, harassment, and vandalism have occurred in 12 states and Washington D.C. More than half, according to Verizon, have taken place in New York State.

At least two dozen strikers have been arrested throughout the region so far. In one incident, a striker was arrested by cops on petty larceny charges for allegedly removing lug nuts from the wheels of a maintenance truck. Another arrest took place outside of the company's headquarters on 42nd Street. A striker who ventured out of the police line set up to pen in the picket line was arrested on disorderly conduct charges.

At the same time, a New York State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan granted Verizon's request for a temporary restraining order that bars pickets from trying to block managers or replacement workers from entering work sites or carrying out struck work. The injunction will be in effect until August 14.

Jacob Perasso is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate in New York.