Verizon Strike Begins

 Excerpts
With no negotiations scheduled, a massive Verizon strike impacting New Jersey and elsewhere began Wednesday at 6 a.m.
Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers began a walkout that could adversely impact the company's 140 million customers, marking one of the largest work actions in any U.S. industry in years.
"Extremely on," Rob Master, a CWA spokesman, told Patch Wednesday morning. "About 700 on picket line here on West 36th Street" in New York City.
Representatives of the Communications Workers of America and the Brotherhood of Electrical Engineers said the company refused to meet with the union on Tuesday and early Wednesday.
No meeting is scheduled for the near future, the union says, so the strike is on.

According to labor leaders, contract negotiations began in June 2015; the workers’ contracts expired on August 1 last year.
“For months and months, we’ve made every effort to reach a fair agreement at the bargaining table,” Myles Calvey, another union leader, said in the statement. “We’ve offered Verizon hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and yet they still refuse to provide basic job security for workers. We have to take a stand now for our families and every American worker.”

Entire article at
http://patch.com/new-jersey/berkeley-nj/breaking-massive-verizon-strike-begins-impacting-nj