The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

August 8, 2011 -- Ask Carolyn—one of the hundreds of Verizon employees who gathered Monday in the Fairland neighborhood of Silver Spring to protest recent contract negotiations—who is manning the company’s call center at Chesapeake Complex at Columbia Pike and Musgrove Road and she’ll shrug.

"Probably nobody," the Bowie resident, who declined to give her last name, told Patch. "Call in there and see what happens."

Carolyn is a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 2108 in Beltsville, which is one of several local groups engaged in a contentious battle for retained employee benefits, including healthcare costs and vacation time.

CWA leaders say they have been negotiating with Verizon for six weeks. Monday’s protest was one of several gatherings along the East Coast, according to WAMU, Washington, D.C.’s NPR member station.

Candice Johnson, a CWA spokesperson, told WAMU that Verizon is demanding more than 100 concessions, many from field technicians and call center workers.

"It pays its top executives well, it's a $100 billion company in terms of revenue, and yet it's looking to these 45,000 workers and their families and to make huge changes in their benefits and their lives, really to affect their middle class standard of living," said Johnson.

At the rally in Silver Spring, Carolyn’s co-worker, Rosetta, of Suitland, said that after 27 years at Verizon, she’s earned the six weeks of vacation time that she has accrued, and doesn’t want to relinquish any of it, which might happen if the company gets its way.

To support the employees, all decked in red and toting picket signs with lines like, "Verizon Can You Hear Us Now?" CWA called in local organizers and politicians who sent short words of encouragement to the crowd.

"With Montgomery County, we are also fighting a similar fight against the county council," said Carlos Mellott, who represented Montgomery County public employees, referring to recent decisions by the council that were unpopular with labor union leaders.

"Your CEO Lowell McAdams is to CWA and IBW as Council President Valerie Ervin is to UFCW local 1994," Mellott continued. "She came and she stabbed us in the back, just like they’re doing to you.

"All over the world from Greece to Wisconsin to here in Montgomery County, they’re attacking workers."

Members of Maryland’s House of Delegates Eric Luedtke (D-Dist 14, Burtonsville), who was in his home district, and Tom Hucker (D-Dist 20, Silver Spring), who represents White Oak and Silver Spring, spoke briefly at the rally.

"I’m proud to be a union member myself," said Luedtke, a teacher at Loiederman Middle School in Silver Spring. "This fight isn’t just about CWA, this fight isn’t just about Verizon. … You know that in America today there is a war on working families; there is a war on the working class.

"This fight is the fight of every middle class family in America," Luedkte continued.

According to CWA’s website, 45,000 Verizon employees across the region are on strike.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://colesville.patch.com

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