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Your solidarity with workers forced Verizon to get serious about negotiating a fair contract. But don’t stop now!
Verizon workers up and down the East Coast have already marched back into work today, wearing their union colors and celebrating a first key victory in their ongoing struggle to win justice at the bargaining table with Verizon. Workers have ended strike action for now, but they still need your support and solidarity:
Take action: Make the pledge that you’ll stand with Verizon workers until justice is won!
Video: USAS flash mobs at Verizon Wireless
Two weeks ago, 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike to stand up to Verizon’s attempts to destroy rights that have ensured a quality standard of living for its employees for the last 50 years. After seeing how Verizon has paid its top executives $258 million over the past four years, while demanding nearly $1 billion from their workers, or $20,000 a year per family, USAS felt it was important to stand in solidarity with these workers against corporate greed that seeks to put profits over people.
On August 13, students from across the country joined approximately 200 members of the Communications Workers of America on a picket line of a Verizon Wireless store in Washington DC to demand that Verizon negotiate in good faith with its workers. Simultaneously, a group of students staged a flash mob inside a different Verizon Wireless store asking customers and management if they could hear us now. (Watch the video!)
USAS activists all over the country organized actions and joined workers. We organized our own actions at Verizon Wireless stores from Seattle to Wisconsin to New Jersey. In Massachusetts, we took action at Verizon Wireless stores and then joined 200 workers and community supporters rallying at a Verizon office. Similar actions were held from coast-to-coast!
But the fight is just beginning: pledge your support to Verizon workers and check out this video for inspiration!
This kind of solidarity between students and workers across the country is what has kept corporate greed in check. Just 14 days after these 45,000 workers went on strike, Verizon has agreed to return to the negotiation table with its workers.
Although the major details of the negotiations are yet to be determined, we will continue to support our sisters and brothers in the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in their efforts to keep Verizon from destroying good jobs that help the working and middle class, and continue to demand that corporations like Verizon negotiate in good faith with their workers.
They say cut back, we say FIGHT BACK!
In solidarity,
Marcos Perez
Los Angeles Valley College
United Students Against Sweatshops
