Verizon strike

Oak Harbor Freight Lines employs 1,300 workers in the Pacific Northwest region. On Monday, 600 of those employees walked off the job, striking against Oak Harbor for tactics used in contract negotiations.

Members claim that they were bullied and intimidated by Oak Harbor Freight. But Oak Harbor is not giving in to the potential loss of half its staff. A company spokesperson insists that the company’s contract disputes and ensuing strike will not interfere with customer deliveries. The company will use replacement workers and the remaining 700 employees to keep products moving and customers happy.

27,000 machinists voted to strike yesterday, but Boeing has asked them to hold off on the walk out for 48 hours while negotiations continue.

A strike would hurt Boeing, but it would also hurt the rest of us.

The best-and-final 3-year contract offer is in, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) isn’t happy. The union is urging the machinists to strike.

A strike would definitely delay the already 15-month late 787 Dreamliner.

We’ll know the results of today’s vote by 11pm EDT.

This is an update to Verizon Strike.

If the comments on our last post about the impending Verizon strike are any indication, this thing is going to happen. The five-year contract expires at midnight Saturday.

But it’s okay, because Verizon says negotiations are going well. Just don’t pay attention to all that picketing going on today. It’s just a trick of the light.

Verizon employees may soon strike. Thousands of workers congregated at Verizon’s headquarters in lower Manhattan yesterday, holding signs and threatening to start a strike on August 3rd, if both sides don’t reach an agreement. Negotiations between the telecommunications giant and the dissatisfied unions (who represent 65,000 workers) hav been pretty slow.

Employees’ contracts are up in about a week and many of their grievances relate to the usual sources of strike-starting-ire: wages and healthcare benefits. But there’s another major issue at the heart of this scuffle: outsourcing. The unions, obviously, are against it. But Verizon says it relies on outsourcing because it affords the company the flexibility to start new projects quickly and efficiently.