Verizon Says No Strike Called as Talks Continue With Unions

Verizon Communications Inc. said employees will continue to work as negotiations continue between unions and the second-largest U.S. telephone company on an agreement on benefits.

Contracts with the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers expired Saturday night at midnight New York time, the company said in a statement.

The telecommunications giant is pushing back against union demands such as increasing tuition assistance and eliminating employee health-insurance contributions, which were instituted for the first time in the 2012 contract. Verizon’s initial offer in June included a 2 percent wage increase in each of the first two years of the three-year contract, plus a lump-sum payment in the final year.

“The company has barely moved off its initial June 22nd proposal,” Ed Mooney, a vice president for Communications Workers of America, said in a separate statement.

Trimming Benefits

Verizon is seeking to cut costs as U.S. households give up their traditional home phones in favor of mobile technology. The New York-based company wants to negotiate changes to health-care and pension benefits that would make it more competitive, according to a statement on Friday. Verizon would require union employees to choose between continuing to earn pension benefits or receiving company matching funds for an enhanced 401(k) retirement savings plan.

“We are disappointed that after six weeks of good faith bargaining and a very strong effort by the company, we have been unable to reach new agreements with the unions,” Marc Reed, Verizon’s chief administrative officer, said in a statement on Sunday.

Workers walked off the job for two weeks in 2011 during contract negotiations, which then dragged into the next year. After 15 weeks of talks, an agreement was reached that preserved a ban on layoffs of workers hired before 2003 and restricted Verizon’s ability to reassign employees far from their homes.

Verizon has taken measures to ensure that customer service will continue in the event of a work stoppage, according to Richard Young, a company spokesman. Thousands of non-union employees have been trained in recent months to cover for striking workers, he said.

Via: Bloomberg Business

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Critics: Walmart Protests Lack Actual Walmart Employees

Union front groups are planning more than 1,500 protests at Walmarts nationwide on Black Friday despite lacking significant support from actual employees, critics say.

The Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), a self-proclaimed subsidiary of the United Food and Commercial Workers retail union (UFCW), says it will picket 1,500 stores the day after Thanksgiving, one of the largest shopping days of the year.

“Associates do stick together and look out for each other. We have to because Walmart and the Waltons seem to be fine with the financial struggles that we’re all facing,” Colorado Walmart employee Barbara Gertz said in an OUR Walmart release. “We’re are all in the same situation, one that Walmart creates by paying us poverty wages.”

Gertz appears to represent a small minority of Walmart’s 1.3 million employees. OUR Walmart’s 2012 Black Friday protest featured thousands of demonstrators, but less than 50 actual associates, according to the company. Labor watchdogs expect more of the same this year, especially because the worker center keeps focusing on the number of protests, rather than the number of employee dissidents.

“They’re not the type of grassroots worker-driven efforts that media portrays them to be,” Ryan Williams of Worker Center Watch said. “They’re protests held by professional protesters—oftentimes paid and given training—to cause a scene for publicity.”

VIDEO: Teachers’ Unions in Their Own Words

You may have heard: Chicago teachers are on strike.

Some facts you may not have seen (unless, of course, you’ve been reading the Foundry): the average Chicago teacher makes $71,000 a year before benefits. That’s $24,000 more than the average Chicago resident, and second only to New York City in teachers’ salaries.

Yet unions are demanding a hefty raise – though they’ve backed down from their initial demand for a 30 percent pay hike. And this is in a city where only 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading, and only 56 percent actually graduate from high school.

So what is the teachers’ strike about, exactly? In a new Heritage video, we present some statements from the Chicago Teachers Union and other teachers’ unions about what exactly their goals are. Are they on strike for the students? For the schools? For themselves? You might be surprised.

Via: The Foundry

Nearly 40% Of Chicago Public School Teachers Send Their Kids To Private Schools

The Chicago teachers’ strike is an awkward dinner conversation between President Barack Obama and his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.   Many of the policy prescriptions in the new Chicago teachers’ contract designed to create more accountability are supported by the Obama administration.

As the Chicago teachers’ strike continues, we’ve learned that they make $71-76,000 a year and they turned down a 16% pay increase, which amounts to $11,360.  They work nine months out of the year, but say that this strike is benefits oriented.  However, given that ABC World News didn’t even air this story last Sunday and most of the media, with the exception of CBS, failing to mention the compensation statistics in their broadcast – suffice to say that the  media will probably ignore the fact that almost 40% of Chicago’s public school teachers send their kids to private schools.

I’m not against public education, but the fact that these teachers make enough to send their kids to private schools shows that Chicago’s public teachers are aware of the serial failure within the system.  Second, it shows that these teachers have zero confidence in their own respective school district.  Why are the teachers going on strike?  Aren’t the contentious measures they’re squabbling about aimed at enhancing accountability that will make their institutions of learning better for the students?  It appears this strike, like most union strikes, are defined by these three words: give. me. more.

However, given the state of public education and that of Chicago, it’s not alien for public school teachers to ship their kids to private institutions.  According to The Washington Times in September of 2004, they quoted the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which found that:

 More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools.

In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools.

In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.

Via: Hot Air

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