BY Arne L. Kalleberg
Opinion
The ongoing strike by nearly 40,000 Verizon workers - the largest work stoppage in the United States in recent years - is a bold fight against the kind of strategies that big corporations have used for decades to maximize profits at the expense of workers.
In the case of Verizon, the tactics the company has already used, and is pushing to intensify in its new contract, include offshoring good jobs to countries such as the Philippines, India and Mexico; outsourcing work domestically to low-wage, non-union contractors; forcibly transferring workers away from their families; and fiercely combating employees trying to organize in the company's almost entirely non-union wireless side.