Help Verizon Wireless Workers Get a Union

On August 17th, the card check and neutrality agreement CWA negotiated with Verizon Wireless will expire. Verizon Wireless has never lived up to the letter or spirit of this agreement.  Instead, management has actively and vocally opposed the unionization of wireless, intimidating union activists and inundating them with anti-union propaganda.

Help our fellow CWA members and the 30,000 other employees at Verizon Wireless get a voice on the job by sending the email below to Ivan Seidenberg,  demanding that Wireless negotiate—and live up to—a real neutrality and card check agreement.

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Real Neutrality and Card Check for Verizon Wireless Workers

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

As you know, the current Verizon Wireless neutrality and card check agreement expires on August 17. Despite the agreement, your management team at Verizon Wireless consistently opposes organizing rights for employees, talking negatively about our union from the very beginning, during new employee orientation. Then employees are barraged with an anti-CWA campaign via e-mail messages, an anti-CWA web site, and face-to-face meetings. Union activists have been singled out and fired. Other employees are afraid to voice their support for the union. The 50 wireless employees who belong to CWA are harassed by management on an almost daily basis.

All this is in stark contrast to our main competitor, Cingular Wireless, where genuine respect for union members have been practiced for years. Cingular honors its commitment to neutrality, allowing employees to decide whether or not to unionize without pressure from management.

Our collective bargaining relationship is one of Verizon's great strengths; together, we have built Verizon into the premier telecommunications company in the country. We have supported Verizon on dozens of regulatory issues in this competitive industry. Yet you allow your team to actively oppose collective bargaining and our union in a critical part of our business.

As a Verizon union member, this is a very serious issue for me. I'm calling on you to demonstrate that Verizon respects real choice for all employees by signing -- and living up to -- a new card check and neutrality agreement for Verizon Wireless. As the chairman of the board of Verizon Wireless, you are responsible for this company and its treatment of employees.

Ivan, we will never give up until Verizon Wireless workers have a real voice at work and the freedom to join the union of their choice.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
July 26, 2004


Background Information

On August 17, CWA's card check and neutrality agreement with Verizon Wireless will expire.  Despite the agreement, Verizon Wireless has done everything possible to prevent workers from joining the union.

They've dragged us through endless litigation to hold up the agreement; they've run a relentless anti-union propaganda campaign; they've harassed and intimidated Wireless workers.  In April, they even shut down two call centers and moved over 1,000 jobs to North Carolina to frustrate our organizing efforts.

Still, we are fighting to renew the card check and neutrality agreement.  Because even if it didn't work the way it was supposed to, we want the company to know that we will never give up until 30,000 Verizon Wireless workers have been organized.

Here's why we need to organize Verizon Wireless:

  • Wireless is the fastest growing part of Verizon, and will soon be the largest part.
  • We cannot maintain our power in the industry if the nation's largest wireless company—Verizon Wireless—maintains a substandard, non-union operation.
  • Its biggest competitor, Cingular, has been organized under a CWA card check agreement with SBC.
  • Thousands of Wireless workers have already demonstrated that they want a union contract.  They've stood up to the company's union-busting, talking to co-workers and signing cards.

So, even if the card check agreement didn't work the way we hoped, we have to fight to renew it and make it work better.

And Ivan Seidenberg needs to know that workers at the core company understand what's at stake in organizing wireless, and that we will not back down until those workers have a Voice@Work —the freedom to join the union of their choice.