Posted on 08/17/2011 9:18:00 AM PDT by Qbert
MYFOXNY.COM - The Verizon strike involves 45,000 workers.
[Snip]
But in the past week, we've seen some CWA union members take it a good bit further.
One group of strikers blew horns and whistles in the faces of Verizon workers.
One protestor in New Jersey appeared to instruct a girl to stand in front of an approaching Verizon truck.
Fox 5 has learned union leaders record a voice message every couple of days updating members on the status of the negotiations.
On Friday, Local 1109 Executive Vice President Chris Calabrese spoke. In one clip, he references what strikers should do to managers and Verizon workers he calls scabs.
"It is open season. Follow them safely, but when you get to a location, torture them. Torture them with chants and noise. Be so loud that they can't concentrate and wish they never got out of bed," he said on the recording. Calabrese also said Verizon doesn't want a fair deal, but instead wants to break the union. "Understand brothers and sisters, we can never let these [expletive] piece of [expletive] pigs break us."
He goes on to tell strikers to be classy to customers and not use profanity or drink on the lines. Within the colorful language, Calabrese never encourages any violence or illegal activity.
Even so, CWA union political director Bob Master said the union decided it was not a good way to communicate.
"Because it could be misconstrued, we did have the message taken down, but people need to understand people's jobs and people's futures and people are upset and they're going to do what they can within the limits of the law," Master said.
Verizon management heard the message and called it classless and immature.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxny.com ...
But of course, he wouldn't mind if a non-union person just happened to get shot, like in Ohio...
Of course, we must never promote violence on Free Republic, but if any union clown ever blew a whistle in my face, he’d be crappin’ teeth for a week;)
Only a communist would label free-market workers as ‘scabs’.
Unions are legal mafia.
Is this happening in every state, or just the northeast? I have a hankering to stop by a local verizon shop after work tonight if it is occuring in the western states...
I make sure to properly salute them when I pass by.
Disclaimer: former union member.
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Good question.
(Bring a video camera along, just in case, if you go.)
I haven't seen any protestors outside our Verizon store in Georgia.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
anybody want to make any bets that they settle for exactly what they were offered when they went out!
from my time in the CWA that is how every strike I was evolved in ended ...the union saying they won but when you went back and looked at they settled settled for what they went out for
I believe it’s only on the east coast.
There may be picket lines outside Verizon Wireless stores, but the strike only involves workers in the company’s landline business — which I believe only includes parts of the Northeast.
Was the non-union electrical contractor in Ohio killed or merely injured?
I did a stint with Verizon and the local union. I have never felt the urge to take a shower each day after getting home from work as I did then.
Two days into the job, all the new hires were called into a conference room for a meeting with the union reps. The first thing out of their mouths was “Who here feels like their wage is too low? We have a grievance form right here for you to fill out.”
Since I came in 1 step below the highest wage on the union scale, I kept quiet. In 6 months, I’d be at the top of the union scale anyhow unless I got fired. And the only way one could possibly get fired is to do nothing short of say... murdering the manager?
I worked in the engineering department and every morning I would get in around 6:30 and check e-mail, go through the inbox looking for new work orders, etc... And every morning around 7am, these two elderly women, who shared the same office cubicle right next to mine, would come in with grocery bags full of food and snacks as well as breakfast bags from Popeyes. And they would pull out the newspaper, each grab a section, and start reading headlines and stories back and forth to each other. Within minutes, they were joined by other friends from around the building for morning breakfast snacks and bull sessions on the latest inner city news. This happened every morning starting at 7am and they usually ran out of food by about 10am and actually start shuffling papers around. To this day, I’m still not to sure just what papers they were shuffling around, I do know that they were not engineers or designers, so who really knows... Fortunately for them, they didn’t have to shuffle papers for too long because lunch started around 11:00.
But that was how it was all over the building. Everywhere I looked, there were always people standing in and around other’s cubicles and very rarely they were discussing business. It’s no wonder why my phone bill was so high. On our floor in the Engineering group, we had about 100 employees. I swear I could go through and handpick a team of about 25, double their salaries, lay off the rest, get the work done and still save Verizon money that could be applied to reducing customer billing. Hmmm... crazy idea, huh?
But then again, what do I know? I was brought up with the silly notion that one should take great pride knowing they put in an honest day’s work.
I’ve read that the strike goes from Boston to Washington, D.C. It’s screwed up businesses here in Jersey and NYC big time. My elderly mother (87) has no phone service.
About 2 1/2 years ago, Verizon came through our neighborhood and dug up everyone’s front lawn to install fiber optics. Shortly after, I started getting 3 to 4 phone calls every week, wanting me to switch to FIOS. These people just would not take no for an answer, so...
After about 2 years of telling them no over and over again, I finally got fed up with them and pulled the plug on my land line.
Best thing I ever did. As far as I’m concerned, they can stay out on strike for ever.
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