Huffington Post:
A union official alleged Tuesday morning that Verizon is slowing post-Irene repairs for thousands of phone, internet and TV customers on Long Island and in upstate New York to put pressure on its workers during ongoing contract negotiations. Verizon says those payback claims are baseless.
Verizon employees are "ready, willing, and more than able" to work extra hours to fix the problems, said Communications Workers of America District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton, but he claims the company instead is intent on denying them overtime as punishment for their recently abandoned strike.
I would definitely want to hear some specifics of these charges, but Verizon's answer is reminiscent of the Eddie Izzard bit on children's lies—"No. Yes. I was dead at the time." Or, in Verizon's case, everyone has a cell phone, so who cares about outages, and anyway delays are the fault of the power companies. At a minimum, Verizon customers might be interested to know that the company doesn't think restoring their service is particularly pressing.