About 40,000 employees of Verizon Communications Inc. represented by labor unions along the East Coast, who’ve been working without a contract since August 2014 said they will go on strike on Wednesday if a new contract isn’t reached. A workers’ strike in 2011 lasted two weeks before a new contract was negotiated.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Communications Workers of America unions represent the Verizon employees.
Verizon Communications, Inc. hires about 178,000 total employees, and has already trained thousands of non-union employees to cover jobs from call centers to telephone-pole repairs.
The unions say they are trying to improve pension benefits and prevent Verizon from outsourcing jobs to contractors. The company is trying to reduce retirement benefits and wants employees to cover more of the health-care costs.
