Verizon averted a strike today by reaching an agreement with the two unions representing 65,000 workers in the company’s Verizon Telecom business group in 10 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C. Given these evolving competitive times, the last thing Verizon needed right now is a strike. Don’t buy the PR speak that says the strike wouldn’t have materially impacted operations. I lived through one as a former management employee of Bell Atlantic. They are quite disruptive. There is no way Verizon wanted to give its cable competitors a potential marketing opportunity, by way of exploiting disruptions in Verizon’s service because of a strike. Given cable’s recent success at the expense of telco’s, a Verizon strike would have been welcomed and leveraged by their cable competitors. You won’t here Verizon admit it, but they just dodged a bullet.
