Verizon Wireless Director Talks About Running Over Picketers

Updated: Our bargaining team requested a written apology to the CWA members at Wireless. Thanks to support from Locals 1101, 1103, and 1107 and all other Verizon members, the manager provided that apology today, which was shared with the members at Wireless.

We're glad to put this behind us and focus on bargaining a fair contract at Verizon Wireless.

On Thursday morning, CWA members at Verizon Wireless were on a routine system performance call with Verizon Wireless managers. The director of system performance for the New York metro area, said, If you see picketers, you're going to feel like running them over. Berberian did not use a joking tone.

The sole bargaining unit at Verizon Wireless, 70 technicians in the New York City metro area, are currently in bargaining. At the table, Local 1101 Secretary Jimmy Trainor told the story of Gerry Horgan, the Local 1103 steward who was killed during the 1989 strike by a scab who tried to drive through the picket line. Trainor urged the company to take appropriate action.

This morning starting at 6:30 a.m., over 100 members of CWA Locals 1103 and 1107 went to the Verizon Wireless corporate office for the metro area in West Nyack, NY. These members joined 6 wireless technicians from Local 1101 and did informational picketing at both entrances to the parking lot.

When the director began driving into the lot, Local 1103 President Joe Barca approached the car and asked the director why he would say such a thing. The director apologized before he turned around and went home.

The director's remark is unacceptable and the company should take appropriate action.

Gerry Horgan

August 15, 1989

Local 1103 Chief Steward Gerry Horgan was run down on a NYNEX picket line in Valhalla, N.Y. during the 1989 strike.

Horgan was the first, and until 2003, the only CWA member killed while picketing. His death is the reason why CWA members still today wear red in solidarity on Thursdays.

The four-month strike over health care benefits was just two weeks old when the daughter of a plant manager hit Horgan, 34, with her car while breaking through a picket line. He died the following day, Aug. 15, 1989, leaving a wife and two small daughters. He is remembered as a natural born leader and the epitome of what a union representative should be.

In January 2003, in another strike over health care, Michelle Rodgers was struck by a police car while picketing the GE Appliance plant in Louisville, Ky. A member of IUE-CWA Local 83761, Rodgers was an enthusiastic union activist who was hit while crossing the street as strikers gathered before dawn.