The Verizon Strike Proves the Internet Still Needs Humans

Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers are heading back to work after a six-and-half-week strike. Recently, Verizon reached a tentative agreement with the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to end a strike that began April 13th. The new contract still needs to be voted on by union members, but workers agreed to return to work. Once the contract is ratified, Verizon plans to hire another 1,400 union workers. It’s easy to think of the Internet as consisting mostly of fiber optic pipes buried deep underground and anonymous data centers full of computer servers and networking gear. But despite advances in automation and artificial intelligence, all of this infrastructure takes real human workers to build and maintain. As Verizon has learned, those workers are still hard to replace.