News
Four-year deal offers raise, bonuses, and makes promises about call centres and outsourcing.
Nearly 40,000 Verizon employees started returning to work on Tuesday, ending a seven-week strike after the U.S. telco reached a new deal with two unions.
The four-year agreement, reached over the weekend, will see affected staff receive a 10.9% pay rise over the course of the contract, plus various bonuses. Verizon has also agreed not to close several call centres, and scrapped plans to cut pensions and accident and disability benefits.
The contract expires on 3 August 2019.
"The new contracts will help ensure that Verizon employees continue to receive solid wages and excellent healthcare and retirement benefits. They also include key changes sought by the company to better position our wireline business for success in the digital world," said Marc Reed, chief administrative officer at Verizon, in a statement on Monday.
Between 36,000 and 40,000 Verizon employees walked out in mid-April.
Those involved in the strike were mainly engineers based in the northeast of the country who install and maintain Verizon’s FiOS fixed broadband service, and related customer service staff. They are members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) unions.
Their grievances included being assigned to jobs that kept them away from home for up to two months, call centre closures, and the outsourcing of jobs to non-union contractors and overseas companies.
Under the new deal, Verizon has agreed to keep open all call centres in the Mid-Atlantic region that were threatened with closure, while three of five centres threatened with closure in New York will also remain open. Union employees in the other two call centres will be offered jobs locally within Verizon.
The new contract will also create a further 1,300 union call centre jobs, and will increase the volume of pole maintenance work in New York State carried out by union workers by 25%.
"The addition of good new jobs at Verizon is a huge win not just for striking workers, but for our communities and the country as a whole," said CWA president Chris Shelton.
The official return-to-work date is Wednesday 1 June, but those employees with night shifts that end after midnight on 1 June will go back to work on Tuesday.
