Brooklyn Verizon Worker Challenges CEO to Climb a Telephone Pole

Pictured: Striking Verizon workers march Thursday in Downtown Brooklyn. Photos by John V. Santore

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, NY — Several hundred striking members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) formed a boisterous picket line Thursday as they marched from the company's offices at the edge of Fort Greene to Cadman Plaza downtown.

"This strike is about being able to support our families," 54-year-old Verizon technician John Burroughs, pictured below, told Patch. "Corporate America is out of control."

Burroughs said he's worked for the company for 26 years. In ongoing contract negotiations, Verizon has asked technicians like him to be willing to spend two days at a time on the road — but Borroughs argued that's unfair.

Verizon's workforce includes single parents, the Staten Island resident said. "How are they going to take care of their children?"

Another Verizon employee said the strike is about the "very survival" of the company's workers.

Christopher Monclova, 48, a patent-holding technician who said he's in his 28th year with Verizon, dismissed the idea that the company wants to streamline its business as the telecom industry transforms.

Monclova emphasized Verizon's plan to cap workers' pension funds after 30 years on payroll — a move that would, he argued, deliberately limit the deserved earnings of the company's longest-serving blue-collar employees.

"They're very profitable," Monclova said of Verizon management. "This is an opportunity to give labor less."

Some analysts have also noted that many workers involved in the strike come from Verizon's wire-based division, which the company has been de-prioritizing — making Verizon less willing to concede to their demands.

As CEO Lowell McAdam himself has written publicly, landline phone use has dropped significantly in recent years, and now provides a minority portion of the company's revenue.

But another senior technician at Thursday's protest, who gave his name as Luis, disputed the idea that wireless services are more important than wired technology.

"We built the network that Verizon wireless is built on," he said. Luis directing his anger at McAdam, Verizon's CEO, whose total compensation rose 16 percent last year to more than $18 million.

"What makes this guy entitled to this money? ... Does he climb [telephone] polls?" Luis asked.