Support Verizon Workers on Strike

BROOKLYN, April 13—Up and down the east coast, Verizon workers are on strike. This is the largest strike in the United States since Verizon workers last walked off the job in 2011. PLP salutes Verizon strikers who are defending gains won over the last 50 years of struggle not only for themselves, but also for all workers!
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All
36,000 thousand workers are taking on a huge and powerful capitalist enterprise whose profits are between $1.5 to $1.8 billion per month. Hundreds of members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) marched in downtown Brooklyn chanting, “They say cut back? We say fight back!”
Starting conversations on the line, we had asked what the issues were. The workers raged at the Verizon bosses. While the top five executives earned over $250 million over the last few years, the workers face no raises, increased costs of health insurance, transfers from one job site to another away from their families and layoffs caused by outsourcing.
Several PLP members joined the picket lines in downtown Brooklyn. Our solidarity was warmly received and we had lively discussions. Most of the strikers here are Black women workers who were giving lively leadership to the picket line. They led the chants in time to the beat of conga drums. It is Black women workers who are hit the hardest by bosses’ attacks on the job and in communities where they live and it is Black women workers who fight the hardest against the racist profiteers. Many were checking out the latest issue of CHALLENGE we passed out on the line.
Verizon workers face the same attacks as workers in industries around the world. As long as capitalism rules the world, the greed of one set of bosses or another will suck the very blood from our veins.
Verizon Workers Fight For All Workers
One question we asked: why weren’t the Verizon wireless workers unionized? When wireless phones first came out, the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) did not unionize the wireless workforce to allow Verizon to be competitive with other wireless service providers. This was a sellout idea. Now, keeping Verizon competitive against Sprint and AT&T is given as the reason that the unionized workers are faced with cuts. The Verizon “wireline” workers fighting for their non-union sister and brother wireless workers exemplifies a principle of communist leadership: an injury to one is an injury to all.
When their corporate attorneys aren’t hitting strikers with their Porsches like they did in Gaithesburg, Maryland on April 16, the bosses are outsourcing jobs, closing call centers, cutting the “wireline” workers, and hiring and super-exploiting low-wage, non-union contractors.  All these cuts drag the unionized workforce down closer to the pay and benefits of the non-union wireless workforce. All in the name of capitalist “competition.”
Verizon and U.S. Imperialism
Where are their profits going? Not to the working class! Military spending is 56 percent of the U.S. budget and that number isn’t going to budge with more than 750 U.S. military bases worldwide, and escalating military tensions between the U.S. capitalists and their Chinese and Russian rivals from Syria to the South China Sea. The bosses’ servants, from Sanders and Clinton to Trump, Cruz and Kasich, may disagree on taxing the rich and taxing corporations, but wider imperialist wars mean higher taxes are on the way.

These escalating war costs and rising taxes are rippling throughout the U.S. economy. Competition between bosses in every sector of the economy is intensifying, including telecommunications.  Verizon bosses know it- that’s why they’re attacking unionized workers now, to build a war chest of profits to take on their rivals as the costs of U.S. imperialism continue to rise.
For Verizon workers and all workers, our survival means we have got to fight back. On April 30, in Brooklyn, PLP is holding a May Day demonstration and March. We called on strikers to join us and to tell their story of struggle against the racist capitalist Verizon bosses. We invite them to learn from communists in PLP of the world we can win where racism, sexism and exploitation are ended forever- through communist revolution!