Stand Up Against Verizon's Corporate Greed
- by: Care2.com
- recipient: Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg
When most companies experience an increase in profits, they reward the employees that helped to make it happen. Not so with Verizon--despite their outperformance of the overall industry, they've recently making crippling demands of their workers.
On August 7th, 45,000 Verizon employees went on strike following the failure of negotiations between management and union representatives. Verizon's demands include asking employees to contribute more to their health care and halting pension accruals for the year.
All this despite Verizon's profits, which tripled in the last year. Verizon's CEO received $18 million in salary increases in 2010. Worst of all, ThinkProgress reports that Verizon routinely skimps out on paying taxes, relying once again on ordinary taxpayers to bleed out even more profit.
Don't let Verizon's corporate greed overshadow the rights of its clearly productive employees. Support striking Verizon workers.
The recent news of the Verizon workers' strike has drawn attention to your company's reprehensible demands of its dedicated employees. I am writing to urge you to treat your employees proportionally to the huge increase in earnings Verizon has seen in the last year.
According to ThinkProgress, Verizon outperformed all of its competitors last year. In addition, you received $18 million in salary increases. And yet, you and your management claim that it is impossible for employees to accrue pension this year, and that workers must contribute more to their health plans.
Such behavior is only increasing your public image of corporate greed. I urge you to meet the striking workers' demands and to behave with integrity when negotiating with union representatives.
