Thousands of working families are gathering outside the Verizon shareholder meeting Thursday morning in Huntsville, Ala., to protest the company’s “VeriGreedy” treatment of customers, workers and taxpayers.

Even as Verizon tripled the compensation of CEO Lowell McAdam to $23.1 million last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, the corporation was outsourcing U.S. jobs, gutting worker pensions and charging current and retired employees and their families thousands of dollars more for health benefits while cutting disability coverage.

Verizon employees have been struggling to win a new contract for nearly a year, according to the Communication Workers of America and the AFL-CIO.

Verizon is a $100 billion company that paid no federal income taxes in 2010 — but that didn’t stop the corporation from socking customers with a new $30 fee to upgrade phones, giving Verizon another $1 billion a year.

The public can take part in the action today by calling Verizon executives at 800-229-9460.

“Tell them it’s the hard work of tens of thousands of customer support representatives, technicians, electricians and other workers that has fueled Verizon’s success,” the AFL-CIO said on its Website and in an e-mail blast. “Let Verizon know the corporation’s workers should not be punished with job cuts and increased health care and benefit costs while Verizon executives get huge pay raises and the company sits on $14 billion in cash holdings and short-term investment.”

© 2012 – 2018, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.