Verizon's Enduring Legacy in College Park and Beyond
This article explores Verizon's multifaceted impact, from its historical context within College Park and its relationship with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to its community engagement initiatives and labor relations.
Bridging the Gap: Verizon and Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Verizon recognizes the importance of fostering relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). These institutions provide environments where students can envision their potential and see examples of success. Verizon's commitment acknowledges the unique role HBCUs play in nurturing talent, particularly in fields like engineering.
Dr. David A. Wilson, president of Morgan State University, highlights the historical significance of HBCUs in developing engineers of color, especially in states where opportunities were limited due to segregation. He noted that among roughly 100 HBCUs, only 14 have engineering schools. Partnerships, like the Minority Male Makers program, are essential to the furtherance of the mission, because “we can’t do that without resources."
Overcoming the achievement gap for minority males is a critical concern. The statistics of low graduation rates and high incarceration rates are alarming. Verizon recognizes that these young men deserve the same opportunities as their peers. It is important to pay attention to little Black boys and Hispanic boys.
Engaging young, minority males is beneficial for the community and society. Actions like these make good community sense, good public sense, it’s good every kind of sense.
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Acknowledging the Past: Overcoming Historical Disparities
Understanding history is crucial to addressing present-day challenges. Despite progress, the representation of African-Americans in engineering remains disproportionately low. While there’s nothing wrong with those kids, from 1952 to 2015, only 3 percent of engineers are African-American.
Giving Back: Verizon's Community Engagement Initiatives
Verizon demonstrates its commitment to the community through various initiatives. The "Pass It Forward" campaign, in partnership with the Atlanta Falcons, exemplifies this spirit. Falcons alumni, cheerleaders, and mascot "Freddie Falcon" participate in surprise events, performing random acts of kindness for Atlantans.
These events include buying lunch for patrons, covering breakfast tabs, and encouraging high school football teams. The Parkview-Brookwood rivalry, one of Metro Atlanta's longest and biggest, was a focus of encouragement.
Former NFL players offered advice to the teams, emphasizing positivity, hard work, honesty, and teamwork. They urged the players to make good decisions and think about their actions, stressing the importance of believing in each other and leaving everything on the field.
These initiatives provide the perfect opportunity for the Falcons to give back to the most loyal fan base in the NFL. Atlantans are encouraged to share their own personal random acts of kindness using the hashtags #VerizonATL and #RiseUp. Giving back to the community is important to Verizon on its employees, and support the communities it serves.
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Voices from the Field: A Glimpse into Verizon's Workforce
Pam, a Verizon field technician in Manhattan since 1999, provides valuable insight into the company's operations and labor dynamics. Starting in installation and repair and now working as a splicer in the construction department, she has witnessed significant changes in the industry.
Field technicians install and repair fiber-optic cables, providing customers with internet, TV, and voice services. Almost all the work we do now is on fiber. There’s very little copper cable left in Manhattan. Splicers run fiber cables, install fiber terminals in buildings, and fix fiber failures when circuits go down. To access the fiber, we open the manholes and set up a cube truck. You set up your work area, pull the manhole cover, set up a guard rail, purge the manhole with a blower to air it out, and put in a gas monitor. You have to have two people to work at a manhole, one on top for safety and to hand down tools and equipment. The fiber is glass and delicate, so it’s encased in protective sheathing. Once it’s stripped of the sheathing, it has to be housed in a protective case.
She highlights the challenges of an aging workforce, with few new field technicians being hired in New York City over the past 20 years. While experience and camaraderie are strengths, the lack of new workers and replacements for retirees poses concerns. It would be good to have new people come in, new energy. And it would be good for new people to learn from the workers who have been there for a long time.
Pam's background in worker centers organizing Latino immigrant workers shaped her perspective on the importance of unions in driving social change. She liked the idea of being a technician, working with my hands and being outside. I knew it was a good union job, though the pay wasn’t good for new hires when I started. I knew it was a job people stuck with for a long time. I like seeing parts of the city that most people don’t see. It’s really been a great job. I like the camaraderie with coworkers. I like the straightforwardness of the job: you have a circuit you have to fix, or something you have to install. Sometimes that takes a day, sometimes it takes longer. It’s clear when it’s done and whether you did it right. When I started, I didn’t have kids. It’s a job where I’ve been able to have a steady schedule and be there in the evenings and weekends with my family. What I don’t like is that I go in to work and often I don’t know what my job for the day is going to be. Sometimes it’s boring.
As a woman in a predominantly male field, Pam acknowledges the potential for isolation and the pressure to prove herself. I think it’s a less intense environment for women than a lot of the other trade jobs. Reading accounts of women in the trades, I’ve been aware that I haven’t experienced the harassment that many of them describe. But it can definitely be isolating to be a woman in a majority-male workplace. Sometimes I feel not taken seriously or overlooked because I’m a woman. Sometimes I wonder if I’m being dismissed because I’m not one of the guys. I think my co-workers probably talk about things differently when I’m not there. I put a lot of pressure on myself not to be “the girl who didn’t know the job.” Sometimes I overthink things because I don’t want to mess up. I’m not as physically strong as a lot of my co-workers, which doesn’t mean I can’t do the job, but there are parts of it that they’re better at and that I struggle with.
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The Power of Collective Action: Union Activism at Verizon
Pam's involvement with the union has been a significant part of her career. I was on the job for a lot of years when there wasn’t a lot of room to do much with the union. My local was very top-down when I started, and there wasn’t a lot of space for new members to get involved. The old officers didn’t even want people to ask questions at meetings. I became a steward in 2001, and I learned a lot from other stewards in my shop. There were a number of years in the early 2000s where I put a lot of effort into trying to be a good steward, but I felt pretty constrained by the fact that the officers at the time didn’t want people to rock the boat too much. They didn’t want anyone else to take on leadership roles, and that led to an effort in 2008 where a few chief stewards ran for office. I met them during the 2008 campaign. I was part of helping build a reform group that ran a full slate in the 2011 election and won.
She has experienced four strikes during her time at Verizon, with the 2016 strike being the most impactful. Since I’ve been at the phone company, we’ve struck four times. The 2016 strike was the most significant experience I’ve had in my time as a union activist. Strikes are hard and stressful, but they’re also a time when you feel your power as workers and as part of a collective effort. Coming out of the 2011 strike, most of my coworkers, including myself, felt that strike ended prematurely. Going into the 2016 strike, the company’s whole method of managing was based on punitive discipline. Technicians in installation and repair especially were under tremendous stress, getting suspended for 30 days for minor issues. Verizon was on the offensive and making outrageous demands that would have rolled back decades of contract gains. There was a lot of doubt whether the national union would call an open-ended strike, given what had happened in 2011. The contract expired in July of 2015. We had a year and a half of contract campaign actions prior to and after expiration, trying to get the company to back off their concessions, with no movement. The company got more aggressive, and it got harder and harder to get members to participate in contract actions. People felt beaten down by the company’s surveillance, the excessive discipline, and the lack of confidence that there would be a strike. When the national union called the strike, there was a 180-degree turn-really overnight. It was a decisive moment. Going on strike changed it from something happening to us to something we had the ability to change.
The success of the 2016 strike was attributed to the commitment at the national, local, and rank-and-file levels. We won that strike for a lot of reasons-it required a major commitment on the national, local, and rank-and-file level, and it was there on all three. The national union ran a great nationwide campaign exposing what Verizon was doing and how outrageous their demands were in the face of the company’s tremendous profits. They made clear the strike was about broader issues of corporate greed and good jobs, not just about Verizon workers. The local leadership was on the ground and moving a mobilization strategy that was very aggressive. In my local, the leadership were people who were elected during the truncated 2011 strike and had a very different approach to the 2016 strike and what the union should be doing. They were at the hotels in the early morning, on the picket lines, traveling to all the different locations, following the work as well. The participation from the rank and file was incredible. It built on itself; from the first day, participation was high and momentum kept building. Every day in Manhattan, we protested outside the hotels where the company was housing scabs. We followed the work all over the city, picketed wherever scabs were doing work and the storage units where they were keeping the equipment, info picketed all the Verizon Wireless stores. Other unions adopted Verizon Wireless stores to help bolster our picket lines, and we got tons of public support outside the stores. This was during the New York Democratic primary race, and Bernie Sanders was in New York in the early days of the strike. Bernie honored strikers at a huge rally in Washington Square Park on the first day of the strike, and a day or two later we held a mass march across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Sanders/Clinton debate. Bernie had a national platform and he used it to talk about how Verizon was a prime example of corporate greed run wild and how the issues Verizon workers were striking over affected everyone.
The experience reinforced the importance of collective bargaining and the power of workers standing together. People at the phone company have a deep-seated sense that this is a good job because the union has made it a good job. There’s a reason most members stay for 30 years or more. There’s an awareness that the benefits and job security we have were won through strikes and all the day-to-day, on-the-job organizing that happens in between, enforcement of the contract, filing grievances, building relationships, that’s all essential. There’s a collective sense that it’s a really good job because people before us fought and won those things and we have a responsibility to hold on to that and to not let them slip away. A lot of people have family members who worked for the phone company, they grew up as kids going to those picket lines. There’s a lot of time over the years when things weren’t very exciting or it felt like we were really on the defensive. It’s important to be somewhere for a long time and build relationships. Don’t go into it thinking you know more than the people who work there about how things should be run. Go in with an openness to learn. Recognize that you have a lot to learn from the people who have been there longer than you, in terms of the job, the history of management-worker relations and how things work, the history of the union. It’s important to go in with a perspective that you’re there to learn, to build relationships, be a part of something bigger, and contribute what you can to that collective effort, but there will be lots of stumbling blocks along the way.
The College of Communications at Penn State and Verizon's Eric W. Rabe
The College of Communications at Penn State recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the field. Eric W. Rabe, a former principal spokesperson for telecommunications at Verizon, is one such individual.
Members of the Board of Visitors serve as ambassadors who advance and support the mission of the College of Communications. “Jayne set the bar high in making the Board of Visitors a vibrant, proactive advisory group,” said Dean Doug Anderson. “Eric touches on almost every area of the College,” Anderson said. “As a former TV newsman, he knows broadcast journalism. He’s been one of the country’s top public relations practitioners. And he has an intimate knowledge of the telecommunications industry. Rabe was recognized in 2005 as an Alumni Fellow, the highest honor accorded by the Penn State Alumni Association. He delivered the College’s commencement address in May 2009. In addition, he has funded the Eric W. Rabe Trustee Scholarship and is a member of the College’s “For The Future” campaign committee. At Verizon, Rabe was the company’s principal spokesperson for telecommunications. The College of Communications is the largest accredited communications program in the country. The College is home to four departments -- advertising/public relations; film-video and media studies; journalism; and telecommunications -- and offers five undergraduate majors.
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