Boston Globe - As 6,000 Verizon employees strike across Massachusetts this week, some Waltham business workers are complaining that the demonstrations are causing traffic delays in an already congested area of town. Verizon Laboratories, which has two locations near Winter Street in Waltham, has hosted approximately 35 picketers between the two buildings since Monday, according to Waltham Police Chief Thomas LaCroix.Donna Zacharewicz, a Gardner resident who commutes every day to Waltham, said she takes the 128 Business Council shuttle to the commuter station after work, but has been missing the train’s strict arrival time. “If I miss my train then I miss my last bus and have to take a cab, which is $30 a night - an extra $150 week I can't afford,” Zacharewicz said. “The shuttle I take has no Verizon employees, the bus doesn’t go to Verizon, it has nothing to do with Verizon, so why are they making their problems our problems?” “They’re striking for $100 per month on healthcare costs, but it’s okay for me to spend an extra $150 per week to commute?” she said. “They’re not protesting in a positive way. If they want to make their concerns heard, they need to do it in a more positive way than spreading misery. They’re just making people around them mad.”
Preach Donna Zacharewicz, Preach! First it was the threats of sabotage and cutting phone lines, now it's screwing with people's commutes? Not cool Verizon Union, not cool.
You want to go ahead and be miserable and quasi-unemployed for a few weeks, by all means, that's your perrogative, but don't drag the rest of us into it...the rest of us have normal jobs, don't depend on contracts, and aren't out their making employment demands for entitlements during the absolute worst jobs situation in a century, just glad to be working. Go nuts if you guys want to, just leave us the fuck out.
I don't give a shit about your contract, you're not some poor mill worker in the early 19th century, what the hell do you even have a union for? Do ATT workers? Or Sprint? Seems to me Verizon is the only major telecom company I've heard of going on strike, which begs the question, why on earth would even want to work in a union? This is two strikes in the last 2-3 years. That's weeks worth of no paychecks that you'll never get back, I mean, are you really thinking this through?