Verizon strike taking toll on customers
The ongoing Verizon strike has entered its 4th week, and while clearly affecting the company and its workers, the strike’s influence has now reached its customers. The frustration is apparent. Verizon customer Linda Lett asks 47ABC “do they really know what they’re talking about? because they just say “don’t worry someone will be there just a moment” and they give you the same lines.”
Lett is fed up with how the company is functioning, during the ongoing employee strike over benefits and outsourcing. She says for nearly a week she waited for service, on and off the phone with representatives, who she says were not much help. “So every time you call they say it’s due to the work outage they don’t even use the word strike. So what are they doing to try to settle this? because certainly it is hampering their service” she vents.
Justin Tapia, Executive Vice President for CWA Local 2106 says that it makes sense that service is suffering, given the experience full time employees have vs. the fill-ins. “They do the work but unfortunately the training to their level isn’t nowhere near the vigorous training that our technicians go through – so to be able to get a problem resolved is a lot harder now when we’re on strike than it would be while we’re not on strike” he says.
Tapia while speaking to 47ABC continued, saying that full-time union workers go through a few months of training, but the fill-ins only get a few weeks. This information no surprise to Lett, and her boyfriend Robert Hoffman. Lett tells 47ABC their frustration has led them to look at other options for service.
A threat that should be feared by Verizon, but it becomes an even bigger fear for therir employees, who know customers are the reason they have their jobs. Tapia says “We’re here to service the customer, we’re here to service Delmarva. We want to be in the field more than anybody out there, that’s why we put our lives on the line out in the field for our technicians to do that type of work. Unfortunately we’re fighting for keeping the jobs here, keeping them from being outsourced. We definitely want to be helping the customer because that’s our number one M.O.”
Tapia’s message a clear one: workers want to get back on the job. Customers clearly want them back, but patience is now wearing thin. Lett concludes “It’s just too frustrating for such a big company not to take a look at how to treat their workers and how to treat their customers.”
47ABC reached out to Verizon for comment, but have yet to receive a response.
