Tens of thousands of Verizon workers on the East Coast walked off the job on Wednesday after the company and two labor unions failed to reach a new agreement by a 6 a.m. deadline set by the unions, more than eight months after their contracts expired.
The Verizon strike, involving about 36,000 workers, is one of the largest in recent years.
The workers, who are resisting proposed cuts to pension benefits and rule changes that would make it easier for the company to outsource work, are expected to picket hundreds of Verizon facilities from Virginia to Massachusetts.
While over 99 percent of the striking employees work for the company's wireline business — its traditional landline phone service as well its fiber optic network, which provides Internet, phone and video service — the presence of a small group of Verizon Wireless workers among the strikers gives their union, the Communications Workers of America, the right to picket Verizon Wireless stores as well.
"There will be a huge program of picketing of Verizon Wireless stores," said Bob Master, assistant to the vice president of District 1 for the Communications Workers.
This could be an important tactical advantage because the company's wireless business is far larger and more profitable, and is growing more rapidly, than its wireline business, according to Verizon's annual report.
An unhappy reaction from wireless customers would be likely to grab the company's attention.
The unions, the second of which is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have made no secret of their intention to also open a political front in the dispute. After the New York City government audited Verizon's performance on building out its fiber optic network there, union leaders asked the City Council to hold hearings, in which Verizon officials testified.
The unions also procured a letter from 14 mayors that criticized the company for not making its fiber optic network available to enough of their residents, and from 20 United States senators urging Verizon to act as a "responsible corporate citizen" and negotiate fairly with its workers.
"The purposes of the strike are to build public support for the workers and to put pressure on the politicians and the regulators to put pressure on Verizon to settle this thing," said Jeffrey Keefe, a professor emeritus at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, who has studied the telecom industry for decades.
Mr. Keefe added that a strike with more traditional aims — putting enough economic pressure on a company to force it to offer workers more favorable terms — "hasn't happened in 60 years in the telecommunications industry."
Verizon officials have assured wireline customers that they will suffer no service disruption during the strike, saying the company has spent months training unaffected workers, primarily supervisors, to take over the duties of their unionized colleagues.
"On Day 1 our first priority is to maintain the customer base we have — answer the phones, surveil the network, work repairs — and we're fully staffed to do that," said Robert Mudge, the president of Verizon's wireline network operations. The next priority is installations, which he said the company also had the capacity to do.
But Mr. Keefe said there would inevitably be frustrations for consumers.
"Training and doing are very different things," he said. "You can be as well trained as anybody, but it doesn't mean you can go in the field and fix anything."
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