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Verizon Reaches Tentative Deal With Striking Union Workers

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Verizon and striking union leaders said Friday that a tentative contract agreement has been reached.

Informational pickets continued daily outside a Verizon store on Boston Post Road (Route 1) in Port Chester. Union officials said Friday that pickets have ended now that a tentative contact agreement has been reached with Verizon management.

Informational pickets continued daily outside a Verizon store on Boston Post Road (Route 1) in Port Chester. Union officials said Friday that pickets have ended now that a tentative contact agreement has been reached with Verizon management.

Photo Credit: Jon Craig
Verizon workers shown as they picketed in the rain in Mohegan Lake. On Friday, labor union leaders said they had reached a tentative agreement "in principle" with Verizon management..

Verizon workers shown as they picketed in the rain in Mohegan Lake. On Friday, labor union leaders said they had reached a tentative agreement "in principle" with Verizon management..

Photo Credit: Carol Arrucci
For the past 44 days, Verizon workers picketed in Port Chester. Labor union leaders said they reached a tentative contract agreement in principle with Verizon management on Friday..

For the past 44 days, Verizon workers picketed in Port Chester. Labor union leaders said they reached a tentative contract agreement in principle with Verizon management on Friday..

Photo Credit: Stephanie Lombardo

The settlement means a likely end to the six-week-old strike of nearly 40,000 Verizon union line workers, which caused widespread delays in repairs and new phone and cable TV service orders.

The workers’ contract expired on Aug. 2, 2015, and a strike began on April 13 including about 1,500 Verizon union employees in Westchester, Rockland and Dutchess counties. Thousands of Verizon and electrical union workers also are on strike in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Striking Verizon said Firday that they made "big gains" in the proposed agreement, including adding good jobs on the East Coast and an overall improvement in their standard of living. 

After 44 days of the largest strike in recent history, striking Communication Workers of America (CWA) members reportedly achieved their major goals of achieving a first contract for wireless retail store workers.

The striking workers included members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. About 8,000 IBEW workers are striking in New Jersey and Massachusetts. 

Verizon strikers included installers, customer service employees, repairmen and other service workers in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., for Verizon's wireline business, which provides fixed-line phone services and FiOS Internet service.

Most of the striking workers service the company's landline phone business and FiOS broadband network -- not the much larger Verizon Wireless network. 

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