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Sunday Morning News

Union Authorizes Walkout of 70,000 Verizon Workers

Aired August 6, 2000 - 9:00 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this morning with an impending strike, or what appears to be one. Verizon Wireless is mostly unionless, and that has led to contract negotiations that so far are fruitless. Talks ended early this morning between Verizon and two of its unions, with the larger one, the Communications Workers of America, authorizing a walkout by more than 70,000 Verizon workers from Maine to Virginia.

Now, talks are set to resume this morning. One of the main issues is Verizon's Wireless Communications, which employs many non- union workers. The union would like to try to organize those employees.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, we're fighting for our lives here. They want to take our jobs and give them to other people at half the rate. They don't want to give them the benefits, and they don't want to give us our respect. I mean, we feel we have nothing to lose, and we're going to stand out here for as long as it takes to win.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Give the people that work there the choice, the choice of whether or not to be union. Nobody's selling that they have to be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: The walkout is not expected to affect communications for Verizon's 25 million customers, but it may impact repair service and new accounts. We will keep you posted on the status of those labor talks, which are taking place in Washington, D.C. Verizon is headquartered across the Potomac in Falls Church, Virginia.

With us by phone to give us a sense of where the talks are is the -- from the company's perspective is Eric Rabe, who is vice president of communications at Verizon. Mr. Rabe, thanks for being with us.

ERIC RABE, VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS, VERIZON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS (on phone): Good morning, great to be here.

O'BRIEN: Bring us up to date. Where do things stand right now?

RABE: Right now we have pickets in front of a couple hundred buildings across the territory from Maine to Virginia, where the workers work who are affected by the current bargaining.

We have managers in place to do the jobs of people who are not reporting to work. And the telephone network continues to work, as you can tell from this conversation, pretty well. We have not had any disruption there at all.

O'BRIEN: All right. I -- I -- what about the wireless network? Are you on a wireless phone right now?

RABE: No, I'm not. And the wireless -- the Verizon Wireless, our wireless company, is not involved in the current labor disruption at all. That -- those workers are at their jobs, they're doing what they normally do, and if you're a Verizon Wireless customer, you're not affected by the strike in any way.

O'BRIEN: All right, now...

RABE: The union workers how are involved in this situation are those who work for the core telecommunications business, Verizon Communications.

O'BRIEN: All right. The talks are in recess right now. There is a sense that there will be further talks today, and perhaps the post...

RABE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

O'BRIEN: ... parties are closer to an agreement, is that true?

RABE: I can bring you up to date a little bit there. We did begin talking again with the unions involved here at 7:00 this morning. We expect to be talking to different union elements at different times, but talking all through the day today.

Certainly the management of the corporation is committed to doing everything we possibly can to get a contract here that's fair to the employees and fair to the company, but mostly fair to our customers, as quickly as we possibly can. And we're going to stay and continue to work until we get that.

At the same time, though, we're obviously taking the steps that we need to to keep service up and running for customers, and we've got a lot of people working on that now.

O'BRIEN: Eric Rabe, vice president for communications with Verizon. Thanks for being with us on CNN SUNDAY MORNING.

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