NEW YORK CITY, June 12—A red salute to the 40,000 brave Verizon workers whose six-week strike against the largest U.S. telecommunications company ended. The strikers’ militancy and unity cost the company over $200 million and gained widespread support despite a virtual total media blackout. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party salutes the Verizon workers for their militancy and determination.
In this period, the international working class faces capitalist attacks from all sides, from racist police terror, to millions of our sisters and brothers displaced as refugees worldwide, to the growing threat of wider imperialist wars. Amid all this, the Verizon workers dared to fight, and showed a glimpse of the working class’s potential to flex its muscle within a vital U.S. industry.
The misleadership of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the entire fake left are calling this a major victory. While modest, it was the workers’ militancy that held the picket lines which won any reforms. However, despite what was won, whatever concessions the bosses gave up are at risk of being taken back. Capitalists stick to their golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Victory is not in the immediate reform gains, but in the steeling of class-consciousness. In a period of relatively low class struggle, the winning is in the fighting. For the international working class, a strike’s larger significance is the impact the Verizon workers had on working-class fightback. Communist PL’ers, and our friends at Verizon, must continue organizing and sharpening the struggle against future bosses’ attacks, while organizing red study groups to win workers to fight for revolution.
What Workers Won, and Lost
Verizon underestimated the workers’ willingness to fight. Some workers were able to shut down the scab supervisors doing union work. Ultimately, the four-year contracts the workers fought for and won will add 1,300 unionized call center jobs. Those call centers threatened with closing, except two, will remain open. The workers will get an 11 percent raise over four years, and 65 unionized workers at Verizon Wireless stores won their first contract. The strike also killed a proposal that would have forced workers to be relocated out of state for up to two months.
The bad news is the bulk of their raise will cover hundreds of millions of dollars in increased health care costs which the union bosses had actually agreed to before the strike. And Verizon will increase the pension 1 percent each year as an incentive to offer annual buyouts to senior workers, to be replaced by new hires whose pensions the union leadership sacrificed in the previous contract. If Verizon workers were able to see the limits of unions, and the pro-boss union mis-leadership, and they continue to organize towards challenging, and eventually overthrowing capitalism, then indeed they will have won.
Struggles Ahead
Under capitalism, no matter how militant the struggle and no matter how many reforms the workers can wrench from the bosses’ grasp, reforms will never lead to destroying the capitalist system which daily attacks our international class. Reforms will never lead to revolution and the creation of a communist world, or the abolishment money, borders, racism and sexism, where workers lead every aspect of society. The rank-and-file power built by the Verizon workers can grow into the seeds of a mass communist movement that can seize power and end the imperialist wars raging worldwide.
The Verizon workers have contributed to a more militant mood, reflected in the movement against racist police terror and the recent anti-Trump actions. And it could be spreading. In New York City, over 25,000 City University of New York education workers and about 15,000 Consolidated Edison utility workers have recently passed strike authorization votes. Building this movement means organizing study groups to discuss communist ideas, how to fight back on the job and to reading and selling CHALLENGE. If workers and youth are in a fighting mood, we have an opportunity to expose how the bosses use their politicians, cops and courts, and how to build the revolutionary communist PLP.