The Verizon Strike Signals a Larger Economic Battle [telecom]

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As profits increasingly flow to the top, workers have had enough.

BY DAVID DAYEN

When you push workers hard enough, eventually they're going to push back. That's what we've seen this week, as Verizon workers initiated the largest strike in America in several years - actually since the last Verizon strike in 2011. Thirty-six thousand landline phone and broadband employees walked out on Wednesday after contract negotiations broke down.

The Verizon case incorporates big themes in the economy - outsourcing, monopolies, automation, and inequality, to name a few. It reflects the gradual thinning out of good-paying, middle-class U.S. jobs. And in this election year, it forces politicians to choose - not just between labor and management, but between a future of shared prosperity for workers and one in which a lot of low-paid service employees cater to the bidding of the ultra-rich.