Verizon is ‘verigreedy,’ workers say

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues., or Wed., June 14, 15 or 16


Good business folks used to nurture ventures for the long haul, paying decent wages for secure jobs, offering products and services customers valued, and paying taxes that sustained communities. Their companies were built to last. Too often, today’s corporate kingpins are instead focused on short-term gains – to the detriment of workers, customers and communities. Such companies are “built to loot,” as Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies says.

Verizon has become an example of such looting.

The nation’s second-largest telecom company, Verizon has management demanding givebacks from workers while reporting healthy profits and lavishing big pay packages on CEOs

The company wants $1 billion in concessions on wages, pensions and other benefits from employees (costing affected workers thousands of dollars each), and they’re planning another $1 billion boost in income from new requirements that consumers pay to upgrade phones.

Workers and customers aren’t the only ones affected. Taxpayers are exploited, too.

“Between 2008 and 2011, Verizon reported $19.8 billion in U.S. profits and yet claimed an IRS refund on its federal taxes of $758 million,” write Collins and colleague Scott Klinger. “This amounts to an effective tax rate of negative 3.8 percent, according to the non-profit organization Citizens for Tax Justice.”

The $100 billion corporation also reveals its priorities. It’s off-shored jobs by the thousands, but pays CEO Lowell McAdam so much money that he makes more in one day than a Verizon technician earns in a year. McAdam’s predecessor, long-time CEO Ivan Seidenberg, retired last August, and the company paid him $26.4 million for just eight months of service that year, a 45-percent increase over his take for 12 months of work the previous year. Seidenberg was the highest paid telecom CEO in 2011. McAdam was the second-highest paid that year, receiving $23 million.

“The company has made billions in profits,” stated the Communications Workers of America (CWA). “They gave their CEO a 200 percent raise. The feds and numerous state governments gave them massive tax breaks.

“For Verizon’s top brass, no amount of profit, no bonus, no salary will ever be enough,” continued the CWA statement. “And while they squeeze customers to line their own pockets, they simultaneously downsize their workforce, outsource to cheap – often overseas – labor, and slash employees’ health care and retirement plans to fill their pockets even further.”

The CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have been locked in a struggle with the telecom behemoth for more than a year over a new contract for its 45,000 unionized workers. Verizon refuses to budge from its demands for takeaways. A two-week strike last August pushed Verizon back to bargaining table after the company walked out, but there’s been little movement since.

Verizon – which provides local phone service to a quarter of the nation and wireless service to about 100 million Americans – last year reported sales of more than $106 billion, and it ranked No. 16 on the Fortune 500 list.

Last month demonstrators assembled in Huntsville, Ala., where Verizon held its annual meeting, and more than 1,000 people protested. The rally was one of dozens held in California, Florida, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia and Washington state. This month, thousands of supporters will take part in a National Day of Action (on Friday, June 22).

Elsewhere, the National Labor Relations Board Region 2 on May 18 authorized the issuance of a complaint against Verizon on 58 of 63 cases of unfair discharge or discipline, many against leaders or activists in the two-week strike last summer.

“This fight has been about economic justice from the beginning,” Collins said. “Some 45,000 CWA and IBEW members spent two weeks on the picket line to force this $100 billion company to bargain fairly, not continue to demand givebacks of $1 billion a year.

“In addition to sky-high executive salaries, the average Verizon board member is paid about $230,000 — that’s three times the salary of a top, full-time Verizon worker with years of experience,” the CWA continued. “Meanwhile, Verizon continues to demand big cuts in compensation from workers.”

Another perspective on Verizon’s priorities: Corporate executives reportedly get half their hefty bonuses for simply performing better than one-third of the company’s competitors, showed Klinger and Collins.

“In school, that would be a D or an F,” said C. William Jones, a former managing director of corporate planning at NYNEX (which became Verizon). “You certainly wouldn’t get a pat on the head for it. That’s like Joe Girardi and Bobby Valentine receiving bonuses if the Yankees and Red Sox finish below second place and don’t make the playoffs.”

For updates on the IBEW/CWA fight with Verizon check out the links www.unityatverizon.com or www.verigreedy.com