Dave Rogol has worked at the Verizon Business facility in Charlton, Mass., for nearly eight years. As a senior telecommunications technician, he tests phone lines for large businesses and government agencies across the entire eastern United States. Rogol and his co-workers work with software that is constantly changing and their jobs require advanced technical and computer skills.

Last February, a majority of Rogol’s co-workers at Verizon Business signed cards indicating their desire to form a union with the Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America. Those cards were verified by community leaders and elected officials, including five members of Congress.  Yet, Verizon refused to recognize the union.

In denying workers their freedom to form a union, Verizon has built a wall separating Rogol and his Verizon Business co-workers from the tens of thousands of union-represented workers at Verizon Telecom–even though both are owned by the same company—Verizon Communications. 

In 2002, executives at Rogol’s previous employer, WorldCom, perpetrated accounting fraud that led to the largest bankruptcy in history. Rogol and his co-workers lost a lot of their savings and saw their wages drastically deteriorate.   They expected their situation to improve after Verizon bought the company in 2006.

Instead, says Rogol, “Verizon was not interested in making sure that the workers’ pay was at the market rate, let alone equal to the wages of our union-represented peers at Verizon Telecom.”

To share in the benefits and wages of their unionized colleagues, Rogol and his co-workers are forming a union.  But, as soon as the workers started talking about the union, management went on the offensive, holding a series of mandatory meetings against the workers’ union. According to Rogol, most of his co-workers remained silent in those meetings, afraid that speaking out would cost them their jobs. 

While Rogol fights for improvements at his workplace by forming a union, he says it’s important to him to continue to perform his job duties as best as he can. “We continue to do a good job and do the best we can for the company because we want to see them succeed. We just want to be treated like human beings—and get compensated fairly and justly,” says Rogol.