BANGOR, Maine — Holding signs and chanting “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Corporate greed has got to go,” FairPoint workers and their supporters gathered Thursday on State Street for an informational picket meant to send a message to Wall Street.
The picketing will go on every Thursday until further notice, according to Fairness@FairPoint.com, a website about the company’s contract impasse created by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communication Workers of America, the unions that represent the FairPoint employees.
FairPoint union members note FairPoint Communications is largely owned by several Wall Street hedge funds such as Angelo, Gordon & Co., which owns almost 20 percent of the company’s shares, the union said in a news release last month
In August, unions representing FairPoint workers said management imposed new terms and conditions on union members after abandoning the collective bargaining process. The company can now outsource hundreds of jobs in Maine to out-of-state contractors, they said.
Union negotiators contend the company never intended to bargain in good faith to reach a fair agreement and is simply pushing to replace union workers in a bid to slash labor costs ahead of a sale. Union official say Maine’s communities depend on the highly-skilled workers who build, maintain and service Maine’s telecommunications systems, including its cutting-edge Next Generation 911 system.
Union members have said that if FairPoint executives and hedge fund owners get their way, less skilled, low-wage contractors would be maintaining Maine’s critical infrastructure.