There will be no lockout.
Verizon's intent on depleting the union funds as well as workers' personal ones. A lockout would mean an immediate access to unemployment benefits for the strikers, instead of a 9-week waiting period that a strike calls for.
The company has the resources to play the waiting game, and couldn't care less about its customer base either. While they're not a bank, they're definitely TBTF.
The end game? Slash the benefits as much as possible and then sell the wireline portion of the business to Frontier.
The means to an end? Nine weeks is a long period of time for any family to be without a paycheck, with no healthcare/prescription coverage and no unemployment benefits either. My best guess is that the company believes that it will be much easier for them to get the union to agree to givebacks on really important issues, the movement of workforce likely being the crucial one.
Healthcare costs are going to go up significantly, and if this were the only point of contention there would've been no strike in the first place. Retirement benefits can be agreed upon for the most part, with minimal level of flexibility shown on both sides.
But the movement of work...think about it: you can outsource call center jobs. That's a no-brainer. You, however, can not move jobs of the field personnel - who also happen to be the people making the most money - overseas.
What you can do is move them around - 80 miles on permanent basis and all over the VZ East footprint on temporary basis - so people leave on their own, unable to uproot their families and play the game in which the goalposts are constantly moving.
And no, this is not about addressing the emergencies, natural disasters and so forth. Verizon had no problem taking care of both Katrina and Sandy with workforce mobilized from multiple states. There are contract provisions in place for such events, and have been for decades.
Short of a major natural disaster or something along those lines, the strikers are in for a long haul. Much longer than 2000/2011, likely something along the lines of 1989, but in a vastly different set of circumstances.