Verizon Communications Inc. said 45,000 striking workers will return to the job beginning the night of Aug. 22, while the two sides keep negotiating what the company called “major issues.” Employee benefits, work flexibility and job security are among the areas that still need to be negotiated, Verizon said in a statement today. Union employees will work, for an undefined period, under terms of the contract that expired on Aug. 6, Verizon said.
Facing a decline in its traditional landline phone business, Verizon has been seeking work-rule changes and employee contributions to health-insurance premiums. Workers have said they shouldn’t have to make substantial concessions as profits rise and executive pay remains healthy.
“This is going to take time, that’s why there was no set deadline,” said Peter Thonis, a spokesman for Verizon, in a telephone interview. “We will be meeting again very soon. There is a set schedule for this.”
Jim Spellane, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said in an interview that today’s agreement “lowers the temperature and helps create an atmosphere for serious bargaining.”
New York-based Verizon said today the two sides have made progress on some local and regional issues.
The resolution will end a 13-day walkout by employees from Verizon’s landline business in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. The labor action was the largest since 73,000 General Motors Co. workers went on strike for two days in 2007, said Jeffrey Keefe, professor of labor and employment relations at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The employees are represented by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
