Verizon is falling a**-first into a pandemic and dragging frontline employees down with it along the way. Verizon is not valuable if the workforce isn’t behind it. When will some of you realize that? The economy is tanking because our LABOR has VALUE.
We can’t even get tested in the States if you’re asymptomatic. So how many of you are unknowingly transmitting this virus to our customers, to our families? Is that what socially responsible means to Verizon?
Verizon hinges on this in-fighting amongst ourselves to keep us preoccupied from having actual conversations about workers’ rights. This is a moment for a collective awakening, a reality check for those who have stayed with Verizon for years, hoping things would improve.
But they haven’t. Verizon still happily dips its hand into our back pockets while their shareholders lick their lips and demand more. DMs contribute nothing to the bottom line and sit cozily at home, out of harm’s way, while they commandeer the select stores that are still open. I will not sit at the table with you if you believe Verizon’s minuscule handouts constitute their morality. Just because Verizon does one good thing, doesn’t mean they’re wholly good. Other people have it worse, and other people have it far better. Demand more, for both you, your peers, and your family.
Select store closures should be enough to show you that Verizon will only make the right call when they’re forced to by way of social pressure from other businesses. There is simply no acknowledgement of the risk you’re forced to undertake because higher-ups refuse to make the right call. Meanwhile, we serve feeble-minded octogenarians who, as it turns out, care very little about our safety — or their own, for that matter — because they were told by Fox News that the pandemic is a hoax.
You are just a pawn, and they will pay your at-risk because they think it will satiate you, that you’ll forget the business model they have so carefully cultivated in the last few years that hands the surplus of your commission payouts as bonuses to anyone up the corporate ladder. Under this system, you earn for others who refuse to do the work themselves. Never forget that.
There is no better time to take a stand and organize together. Stop bootlicking. Stop white-knighting for a company that would bend you and your family over for a fraction of a percentage point.
To clarify: The individuals in the upper echelons of management not only refuse to do the work themselves, they believe they are better because of it — that they earned their comfy title from merit. This is categorically untrue. They think less of you because they truly believe we work in a meritocracy where our efforts are always rewarded. Any other way of thinking would threaten their own ego and status.