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Verizon strike hits 30-day mark with no end in sight

The nation's largest labor strike is now a month old - 39,000 Verizon Communications Inc. workers off the job from Massachusetts to Virginia since April 13 - and no new talks are scheduled.

The nation's largest labor strike is now a month old - 39,000 Verizon Communications Inc. workers off the job from Massachusetts to Virginia since April 13 - and no new talks are scheduled.

The latest blowup involves four members and staffers of the Communications Workers of America who visited the Philippines, where Verizon operates call centers through a contractor, and who say workers there are paid a fraction of what their counterparts make here.

Of the 39,000 on strike, about 13,000 are call-center workers, the union said. Their job security is a key issue.

Since 2000, Verizon has sold many of its legacy phone lines, while its wireless division has boomed. It also became a content provider, buying AOL Inc., owner of the Huffington Post, for $4.4 billion in 2015, and last month the Hollywood digital studio AwesomenessTV.

Many observers, from Verizon workers to Wall Street analysts, wonder if the company will eventually exit the phone line business, which requires huge investments to modernize.

Both sides say there has been little progress in bargaining.

Verizon has said it wants to gain efficiencies by closing and combining call centers and routing calls to outside contractors, including in the Philippines and Mexico.

The union says Verizon has not fulfilled promises it made in the last contract to keep call-center work in the Northeast. The union, one of two striking the New York-based telecom company, said Filipino call-center workers said they were earning the equivalent of $1.78 an hour, and were forced to work overtime and were not paid overtime rates.

The union members said that private security guards and a police SWAT team, armed with automatic rifles, surrounded their van Wednesday after it had pulled away from Verizon's offices in Alabang, south of Manila.

CWA regional vice president Edward Mooney said in a statement, "Verizon is going to great lengths to try to hide their strategy of outsourcing middle-class American jobs in favor of poverty wages abroad."

Verizon spokesman Richard Young said the company had no comment on Filipino wages because the call-center workers are not Verizon employees.

"Why in the world would the CWA . . . spend tens of thousands of dollars to send a dozen or so CWA members to the Philippines for a fancy vacation . . . when [striking workers] are lucky to get $200 a week from a union strike fund?" the company said in a statement.

jvonbergen@phillynews.com

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@JaneVonBergen

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