A Verizon Worker Tells His CEO Why He’s Striking
In an open letter, a technician for the telecommunications giant told his CEO that he and his colleagues are not “tools” -- as one manager had hurtfully suggested -- but men and women with lives, needs and dignity.
Verizon workers on strike in Staten Island, N.Y., in April. (Thomas Altfather Good / CC BY-ND 2.0)
Verizon workers on strike in Staten Island, N.Y., in April. (Thomas Altfather Good / CC BY-ND 2.0)
“Treating us like tools isn’t good for Verizon’s bottom line,” Dan Hylton, a Verizon technician, wrote in an open letter to Lowell C. McAdam, the CEO of Verizon — which makes $1.5 billion in profits every month. Hylton is on strike because the company is increasingly sending technicians like him on last-minute assignments, sometimes hundreds of miles away from home. The assignments are a particularly stressful problem for Hylton because he is caring for a sick wife, who could die if he is not around to keep any eye on her condition.
“Last week, I took a drastic step,” Dan Hylton of Roanoke, Va. wrote in the letter, published at Medium. “Instead of going in to work at Verizon, I stood outside with a picket sign. I’m on strike because it’s time for you to listen to us.”
“I install and fix Internet, cable and phone service,” he continued. “I’m proud to say I’ve volunteered to serve wherever the need is greatest. I went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and Central Florida after bad storms there.”
“Yet on a work call the other day, one of the managers said technicians like me were ‘tools to accomplish a task.’ Maybe that manager chose those demeaning words poorly, but that comment stung with more truth than I can easily admit.”
“There is another way to be,” Hylton continued further down in the letter, “and that’s treating us like family.”
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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