After talking for the better part of a year, a one-day strike last week and mediated negotiations, the Communications Workers of America District 9 reached a deal with Verizon Communications in California.
It, apparently, isn’t the contract that the union wanted, but it is a contract.
The deal gives Verizon employees who work on the company’s land line operations a pay increase of 8.77 percent over the four years of the contract. The deal also covers workers who install and maintain Verizon’s FiOS services, which serves home television viewers. Technicians, operators, maintenance workers and call center personnel are among those covered by this deal, including personnel at more than two dozen Inland-area facilities.
Pension and medical benefits had been among the more contentious issues, and Sayre said workers had to settle for less than they wanted in those areas.
“As in the rest of the country, we have had to agree to some difficult concessions in the area of pensions and medical benefits, but we also preserved many terms and benefits the company had sought to take away,” Jim Weitkamp, District 9’s vice president, said in the statement.
The deal also limits how much work on FiOS systems Verizon can outsource.
Deja Vu all over again?
It seems as though the CWA has been saying pretty much the same thing since Harold Greene kicked the red-shirts in the teeth in the early 80s.
