By JENNIFER PELTZ

– Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon employees will return to work Wednesday after reaching a tentative contract agreement that includes 1,300 new call center jobs and nearly 11 percent in raises over four years but also makes health care plan changes to save the company money, the company and unions said Monday.

The pact, subject to approval by union members, stands to end one of the largest strikes in the United States in recent years. Workers and Verizon Communications Inc. had reached an agreement in principle Friday but hadn’t released details or a date for the workers’ return. The strike began in mid-April.

The Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions, which both represent the strikers, called the deal a victory for American workers.

“We are turning the tide from cutbacks against working people to building a stronger labor movement and strengthening the power of working Americans,” Dennis G. Trainor, vice president of the union’s District 1 in the Northeast, said in a statement. The IBEW said it protected American jobs amid concern about concern about work moving overseas.

New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. said it was a good deal for workers, customers and the telecom giant alike.

“This will allow our business to be more flexible and competitive,” chief administrative officer Marc Reed said in a statement.

Union members will vote on the deal after returning to work.

Besides the raises and new call center jobs, the tentative agreement includes $1,250 in signing bonuses and health care reimbursements for new workers, a 25 percent increase in the number of unionized crews maintaining Verizon’s utility poles in New York state, and three 1 percent increases in pensions, which Verizon had proposed to freeze, the CWA said. It also includes a first-ever contract for wireless retail store workers, affecting 70.

The deal also entails changes that Verizon says will save significant money, such as adopting Medicare Advantage plans – private health insurance contracted with the government-sponsored Medicare program – rather than costlier insurance. The tentative agreement also increases flexibility to route customer service calls from one call center to another, the company said.

Installers, customer service employees, repairmen and other landline and cable workers in nine Eastern states and Washington, D.C., have worked without a contract since August. During the strike, other workers have stepped in, but there were some delays in installations of Verizon’s Fios fiber-optic service.

The unions said they were striking because Verizon wanted to freeze pensions, make layoffs easier and rely more on contract workers. Verizon said it had high health care costs for its unionized workers, a group that has shrunk as Verizon sold off large chunks of its wireline unit and focused on its mobile business, which was not unionized. It also wanted the union workers, around one-fifth of its U.S. workforce, to agree to move around to different regions when needed, which the union opposed.

The strike made its way into the presidential campaign. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton visited strikers outside a Verizon store in midtown Manhattan, and rival Bernie Sanders cheered workers on a picket line in Brooklyn.

But the walkout was also complicated by allegations that strikers in Delaware intimidated and harassed non-union replacement workers. Union locals said any problems were isolated incidents not sanctioned by labor leaders; a Delaware judge said Thursday he felt the unions had “a causal role” but declined a Verizon request to hold them in contempt of a court order on permissible strike activities.

Verizon workers last went on strike in August 2011, when about 45,000 were off the job for about two weeks.

Source – http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20160530_ap_ed168416398041baa961a4c887fdc1a3.html

– On this Memorial Day 2016, as we gather to celebrate the start of the summer season with family and friends, let us always remember the reason why we are celebrating and pay homage to those members of our U.S. Armed Forces who gave all so that we may experience the freedoms that we enjoy everyday as Americans.

Let us also remember those military families who have watched their loved ones go off to war only to never return and let them know that their loss is also our loss and they too will never be forgotten!

It Is Our Duty To Remember!

In Solidarity!

PhillyLabor

By The Pa. AFL-CIO

– UNION TO TAKE DOWN PICKETS; COMPANY AGREES TO ADD GOOD UNION JOBS ON THE EAST COAST; FIRST CONTRACT FOR RETAIL WIRELESS WORKERS; IMPROVES WORKERS’ OVERALL STANDARD OF LIVING.

Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers who have been on strike since April 13 are celebrating big gains after coming to an agreement in principle with the company. After 45 days of the largest strike in recent history, striking CWA members have achieved our major goals of improving working families’ standard of living, creating good union jobs in our communities and achieving a first contract for wireless retail store workers.

“CWA appreciates the persistence and dedication of Secretary Perez, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Allison Beck and their entire teams. The addition of new, middle-class jobs at Verizon is a huge win not just for striking workers, but for our communities and our country as a whole. The agreement in principle at Verizon is a victory for working families across the country and an affirmation of the power of working people,” said Chris Shelton, President of the Communications Workers of America. “This proves that when we stand together we can raise up working families, improve our communities and protect the American middle class.”

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6897

By Jane M. Von Bergen

– Verizon Communications Inc. and its unions have reached a tentative four-year agreement, U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said Friday, ending the largest strike in recent labor history, with an estimated 36,000 to 39,000 workers off the job.

“We have a great contract that is going to protect our members and bring in additional jobs,” said Edward Mooney, a vice president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), one of the two unions on strike against the telecommunications company since April 13.

“Verizon is very pleased with this ‘agreement in principle,’ ” Verizon’s chief administrative officer, Marc Reed, said in a statement.

“The agreement is consistent with our objective of creating high-quality American jobs and achieving meaningful changes and enhancements to the contracts.”
The strike involved CWA and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) members employed in Verizon’s landline divisions from New England to Virginia. It occurred as Verizon is building its nonunion mobile business and selling off its traditional wireline assets, where most of the unionized employees work.

The unions urged their members to have a great weekend and to be prepared to return to work next week. So far, there is no schedule for ratification votes on either side.

Wall Street reacted happily to the news Friday. On April 4, Verizon’s shares had reached a high of $54.42, but they fell to $49.14 on Monday as analysts and executives said the strike was taking its toll on revenue.

The Friday afternoon announcement of an agreement prompted an immediate spike in the price to $50.82, from Thursday’s close of $50.16. Verizon shares closed Friday at $50.62.

On Friday morning, a handful of CWA members in red T-shirts with their strike signs chatted outside Verizon’s Philadelphia headquarters at 17th and Arch Streets.

The pickets dispersed as word of the settlement spread via text message: “Tentative contract – four year deal. Stand down. Strike is over.”

The workers will receive wage increases. Issues involving pensions and the assignment of workers to locations far from their homes was settled in the unions’ favor, Mooney said.

A key concern – the routing of sales and technical-support calls overseas – also was settled in the unions’ favor, said Julie Daloisio, president of CWA Local 13500, which represents call-center workers in Pennsylvania.

In return for the company agreeing not to close 30 call centers and agreeing to add 1,300 employees instead of sending many calls to outside contractors, the union agreed that calls could be handled by any union operator, not just those in the state where the call was made, she said.

The agreement will add 300 jobs in Pennsylvania, Daloisio said.

What made this round of bargaining unusual was the intense involvement of Perez, the labor secretary.

“This tentative resolution is a testament to the power of collective bargaining,” he said in a statement.

Long past midnight, in Friday’s early hours, Perez remained holed up in a conference room at the Labor Department’s headquarters along with Verizon chief executive and chairman Lowell McAdams, the leaders of the two unions, and Allison Beck, the director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

“It shows the concern the administration had in getting this resolved, that they would put that kind of resources into it,” said Michael Hanlon, a longtime management-side employment lawyer and a partner in the Philadelphia firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.

Hanlon said it was also unusual for a corporate chairman to be involved in negotiations.

On May 17, after the strike had gone on for nearly five weeks, Perez called the parties to Washington, asked them to agree to mediation, assigned the top mediator, Beck, to the case, and insisted on a blackout of negotiation-related communications.

“I offer my deep gratitude to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Allison Beck for all their efforts to help us reach a fair and mutually beneficial agreement that gets our members back on the job,” IBEW president Lonnie R. Stephenson said in a statement.

Perez “was able to look at things without any of the viewpoints that the two sides had,” Mooney said, adding that Perez made sure “both sides kept their eyes on the end goal, which was a contract that will secure middle-class lifestyle and a future at this company for our members.”

The final issue to be resolved, Mooney said, was a first contract for the only two wireless units in Verizon to have been organized into a union, CWA.

The parties broke for a few hours about 3 a.m. Friday, returning to the bargaining table about 9 a.m., with an announcement from Perez sent out in the early afternoon.
It turns out that Perez was operating under his own strike deadline: his daughter’s high school graduation, which was set for Friday.

Source – http://www.philly.com/philly/business/labor_and_unions/20160528_Verizon__striking_unions_reach_tentative_agreement.html

By The APWU

– After nearly a year of procedural wrangling, 10 days of testimony and more than 140 exhibits, the National Labor Relations Board hearing on charges that the Postal Service illegally subcontracted work to Staples ended on May 24.

Region 5 of the NLRB issued a complaint against the Postal Service on June 26, 2015, in response to an “unfair labor practice” charge filed by the APWU. The complaint asked the NLRB to order the USPS to cancel its Approved Shipper deal with Staples and return the work to postal employees.

The hearing, which began in August 2015 and continued in November and February, resumed on May 18. NLRB General Counsel called APWU President Mark Dimondstein as the final witness in its direct case.

The NLRB General Counsel was represented by Daniel Heltzer and Cristina Cora, who worked closely with the APWU to demonstrate that the Postal Service refused to bargain with the union over its decision to contract out work to Staples.

Following Dimondstein’s testimony, the Postal Service and Staples presented their cases. The Postal Service called seven witnesses who attempted to justify the Postal Service’s decision to contract out Clerk Craft work.

NLRB attorneys cross-examined the USPS witnesses and re-called APWU Manager of Negotiations Support Phil Tabbita, who testified in February, to rebut their testimony.

A ruling by Administrative Law Judge Paul Bogas is not expected for several months.

Many parts of the record and most documents introduced at the hearing remain under “provisional seal,” which prohibits the APWU from sharing the information contained in them.

Dimondstein vowed to fight to make the documents available to union members and the public. “The dirty deal between Staples and the USPS has been shrouded in secrecy from the beginning,” he said. “But the people have a right to know about management’s attempts to privatize their Postal Service.

“Our country deserves public postal services that are provided by well-trained USPS employees who are accountable to the people,” he said.

Source – http://www.apwu.org/news/web-news-article/nlrb-hearing-staples-concludes