Sponsored by Verizon Communications Inc.

The company has laid out its reasons for asking concessions from its aggrieved workforce.

A New York City education panel should delay voting on a $120 million contract for Verizon Communications Inc until the telecommunications company settles a strike by 45,000 of its workers in a Northeast unit, the city comptroller said on Wednesday.

?We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him,? he said.

A New York City education panel should delay voting on a $120 million contract for Verizon Communications Inc until the telecommunications company settles a strike by 45,000 of its workers in a Northeast unit, the city comptroller said on Wednesday.

Verizon said it is sending out letters to 45,000 striking employers that if they don?t return to work by then, their health care benefits will expire on August 31.

The planned layoffs would reportedly include management, pilots, cabin crew and engineers. The company has a total of 35,000 employees.

Striking Verizon workers will lose health benefits on Aug. 31 if they are still on picket lines, the company has confirmed.

Strikers will also lose pension benefits, life insurance and other benefits.

According to Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski, the company?s base of landline telephone customers declined from 45 million to about 25 million in just the past five years.

Verizon Communications is sending its 45,000 striking workers notice that their health insurance benefits will expire at the end of the month if they don't get back to work.

Verizon Communications is sending its 45,000 striking workers notice that their health insurance benefits will expire at the end of the month if they are not back at work.

Virtually all of the 45,000 employees on strike work for this struggling landline segment, prompting company officials to re-evaluate its cost structure,

Verizon has threatened to pull the benefits of 45,000 striking workers on Aug. 31.

Some congressmen from Massachusetts recently joined the picket line

The company said the replacements are handling customer service and network operational duties.

Hundreds of Verizon workers in red shirts interrupted a nine-day-old strike to place a wreath at a site in suburban New York on Monday morning, where a colleague was fatally injured on a picket line 22 years ago. The union workers began reportedly one of the biggest labor strikes in recent U.S. history on Aug. 7.

The latest expansion of an already bloated federal government is a program aimed at putting free mobile telephones into the hands of low-income Americans.

The union says health care is not the issue in the Verizon strike. A local union president says Verizon is attempting union busting.

About 45,000 Verizon workers, represented by the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have been on strike since last Sunday after talks for a new labor contract failed.

Shortages of steel raised fears that the automobile industry would suffer production cuts and might have to lay off significant numbers of their own workers.

The following is a statement from Edwin D. Hill, International President of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) regarding recent developments in the strike against Verizon.

Virtually all strikers are from the company?s struggling wireline division.

Reportedly, incidents of wire-cutting by aggrieved strikers have interfered with the phone services of thousands of customers between Virginia and Massachusetts.

Many of the people demonstrating near Ivan Seidenberg?s home carried placards and held candles.

?We?ve been willing to talk and willing to move forward,? said union spokeswoman Candice Johnson.

Verizon Communications Inc and a union representing about 35,000 striking workers swapped labor complaints on Friday, with both sides complaining that the other was not bargaining in good faith.

Verizon claimed sabotage, and called the FBI Friday. Tensions in the 45K worker strike are rising.

Verizon Communications (VZ.N) won court injunctions in three states to prevent strikers from blocking facilities and it was seeking similar legal protection in two more states on the fifth day of a strike involving almost half the workers in its wireline business.

Verizon said Thursday service during the 45,000 worker strike was going well. But others tell a different story. Negotiations continue, but the tension rises as the strike nears one week.