Time Business is reporting: “Thousands of striking workers in Verizon Communication Inc.’s landline division joined picket lines and rallies Monday at company offices from Massachusetts to Virginia, a union official said.

“The contract for 45,000 employees expired at midnight Saturday after the company and the workers were unable to come to terms on issues including health care costs and pensions. Several hundred strikers demonstrated outside the company’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, most wearing red shirts and chanting, ‘Union busting, it’s disgusting!'”

STEVE EARLY, lsupport at aol.com

Steve Early is a former organizer and national union representative for the Communications Workers of America, who was involved in organizing, bargaining, and strikes at Verizon (and its predecessor companies) for 27 years. He is the author of the book “Civil Wars in U.S. Labor.” He said today: “This Verizon work stoppage is the sixth strike in the last 28 years by some of the telephone workers involved. They’ve been in the forefront of resisting healthcare cost shifting and other concession demands since private sector employers first went on the offensive after the air traffic controllers’ strike was defeated in 1981. If a company that made nearly $20 billion over the last four years can claim that it needs give-backs, then every other unionized firm in America will be clamoring for them, even more aggressively than they are now. So there’s a lot at stake here, and not just for 45,000 members of the CWA and IBEW who walked out on Saturday night.”

See also Early’s recent article: “Verizon Showdown Calls for New Strike Tactics“