Reports from the Picketlines

SW.org has the story here, from the front lines of the Verizon Strike:

The company's overall workforce now majority nonunion, CWA and IBEW members need to see workers at VZW as potential allies and future union brothers and sisters. We need to turn the tide back toward a majority union company. Many (if not all) in-store technical workers will lose their jobs at the end of the month when the company reorganizes tech support, so there has never been a better time to demonstrate the benefits a union can provide.

Unions also need to go back to the tactics from 1989 and encourage customers not to pay their bills in solidarity with the strike. Now, with online billing, the company has a rock-solid income--but a campaign of de-enrolling in Easy Pay by the union could make waves. The 45,000 union members themselves are customers, with connections to literally hundreds of thousands of other households.

In addition, we need to highlight the toll Verizon's greed is taking on our families. Not only are strikers losing pay, but on August 30, we lose our health care. Rallies with children and dependant family members could expose the blatant greed of a profitable company depriving thousands of people of necessary care.

Besides reaching out to VZW and the public, we need to focus on the kind of aggressive, disruptive tactics that can win this strike. The outcome of this strike is unwritten, but the pieces are there for an important victory for labor.