Protesters greet Verizon shareholders meeting
Local workers turn out in support of East Coast strikers
Verizon Communications’ top five executives received a $ 48 mi l l ion annual compensation package at the company’s yearly shareholder meeting Thursday morning at the Hotel Albuquerque, while some 200 workers protested outside in support of 39,000 employees on strike on the East Coast.
At the meeting, held in Albuquerque for the first time, shareholders also rejected three union-backed proposals to name a board chair independent of Verizon’s CEO and impose more control over compensation and severance payments for executives.
Workers from Verizon’s landline phone, cable and Internet business went on strike April 13, affecting company operations in certain states. The strikers want better wages and benefits and oppose company demands for more contracting “flexibility” that they believe would open the door to more nonunion hires and outsourcing of jobs to other countries.
A delegation of strikers and union reps from the Northeast attended the meeting in Albuquerque as employee shareholders. They were joined by local union members and supporters for a march and demonstration outside the hotel in Old Town.
The protest became somewhat raucous, with some of the participants blocking Rio Grande Boulevard in front of the hotel and on some side roads. Some protesters sat down in the road for about half an hour, leading police to remove 15 people and issue citations for obstructing traffic.
Still, overall, the demonstration remained peaceful.
“I’m here to fight corporate greed,” said Mike Watson, a striker from Delaware and a Communications Workers of America (CWA) division representative. “The company is earning billions of dollars every month, but they want us to pay more for our health care and give up our job security. I have a family to take care of.”
There are no Verizon workers on strike in New Mexico. But many local members of the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represent striking Verizon employees, joined the protest.
Verizon employs about 1,350 in New Mexico. That includes about 1,100 at a Verizon Wireless call center at Central Avenue and Coors Boulevard, and about 250 at nine retail Verizon Wireless stores around the state. Verizon Wireless employees are not unionized.
Given the company’s small footprint here compared to bigger markets, many union representatives suspect Verizon held the shareholder meeting in Albuquerque to avoid publicity surrounding the strike elsewhere. But the company says it rotates the meeting to different cities every year to provide shareholders in more regions a chance to participate.
The CWA called for a nationwide “Day of Action” on Thursday in support of striking workers, with protests held in cities across the country.
At the shareholder meeting, the unions failed to get approval for changes in governance and management of executive compensation and severance payments. Requirements for annual reporting on corporate political spending and lobbying at federal and state levels were also shot down.
Shareholders did approve proposed annual compensation packages for Verizon’s five top executives, including $18.3 million in salary, benefits and stock awards for Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam.
After the meeting, workers said their demands are falling on deaf ears.
“Frankly, this shareholders’ meeting is a farce,” said Michael Gendron, a union rep from New York. “The outcomes are pre-determined and executives have too much power in their hands.”
McAdam, for his part, didn’t discuss the strike in his speech. But he urged workers to come back to the bargaining table.
“We would like nothing more than to complete a contract, either through mediation or negotiations,” McAdam told shareholders.