Verizon Sends 'Final Offer' to Union Strikers

The unions won't stand down and the strike will continue, CWA District One Vice President Dennis Trainor and District 2-13 Vice President Ed Mooney said in a joint statement. "Verizon workers remain on strike and are standing strong on the picket lines. At negotiating sessions in Westchester and Philadelphia today, executives refused to back off of callous proposals that would hurt working families and destroy middle class jobs, including shipping jobs overseas and outsourcing work. The company also failed to budge on the issues facing Verizon Wireless workers. Verizon workers, customers and shareholders need the company to get serious about negotiations and building a stronger company." The union is considering next steps in the bargaining process, Mooney and Trainor added.

The company proposed a 7.5 percent wage increase over the term of the contract. If an employee has layoff protection today, it will be retained for the term of the contract as long as the telco has flexibility in managing and deploying the workforce through measures including voluntary retirement incentive offers, Verizon said. Verizon will maintain its current 401(k) company match, and eligible employees will continue to have pension plans with a new maximum cap of 30 years, Verizon said. Verizon also will maintain healthcare coverage, with increases in contributions and some plan design changes to help manage costs, it said. Verizon also updated proposals related to call routing, contracting and temporary work assignments. The company posted full details on its website.

"We're putting our last, best final offer on the table, one that provides the foundation for quality jobs now and in the future," Reed said. "From the beginning, our goal has been to reach an agreement that's fair to our employees, good for our customers and helps our company better compete in the digital world. This offer meets those objectives. A better offer would be hard to find."

The carrier issued the proposal one day after union workers claimed safety violations by their temporary replacements, and Verizon won an injunction in New York to stop alleged acts of sabotage by the union workers represented by the CWA (see 1604270059). While a Verizon executive recently said the ongoing strike could affect Verizon’s bottom line (see 1604210043), analysts said Wednesday that Verizon shouldn’t have a major financial problem unless the strike were to drag on for many more weeks.

Consumer perception levels of Verizon Wireless and Verizon Fios dropped to three-year lows in the two weeks since the telco’s union workers went on strike, said a YouGov BrandIndex report released Wednesday. It’s the company’s lowest score since Verizon revealed that it handed over customer phone records to the NSA, YouGov said. While the striking workers are on the wireline side of the business, sharing the Verizon brand name hurt Verizon Wireless as well, YouGov said. The YouGov BrandIndex asks respondents whether they heard anything positive or negative about a brand in the previous two weeks, and then assigns the brand a score from negative 100 to 100, with a zero score equaling a neutral position. Verizon Wireless scored an 18 on April 13 when the strike started, but two weeks later the score halved to nine, YouGov said. Verizon Fios’ score dropped to two from seven in the same time period. Three years ago, Verizon Wireless scored a 1 after the NSA revelation. YouGov measures brand perception through an online panel of 4 million people of varied demographics across 37 countries.