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AT&T Suggests To 300K Employees To Lobby the FCC
Several readers sent in the news that AT&T's top lobbyist sent a letter to all 300,000 employees urging them to give feedback to the FCC as it gears up for rulemaking on net neutrality. He even supplied talking points approved by the PR department. The lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, suggested that employees use their personal email accounts when they weigh in with the FCC. Pro-net-neutrality group Free Press has now likened Cicconi's letter to astroturfing: "Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion."
But my wife received a letter from her Employer asking her to lobby her congress/senate folks on behalf of the health care debate. She didn't feel comfortable doing it at all and told her boss so. What you do at your home should be purely divorced from your work. I'm sure there are some places where this doesn't hold, but I think most office drone jobs don't apply. I think it's pure bullshit and someone should call their sorry asses on the carpet for it. I'll vote or lobby whoever the fuck I want and however I see fit.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Yet millions of people send chain e-mails every single day.
Sure the CEO can't tell anybody followed his suggestion, but how many people actually KNOW he can't?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Coming from one of the company's most senior executives, it's hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion.
When I've worked for large companies, the further up the chain the less likely I'd be to care whatsoever what it said. That makes this even less of a suggestion, and more like a wish, that anyone may or may not fulfill (or in fact even read as this sounds like a message I would have just skipped over). It's not like a "high level exec" is going to come by the office next Monday and ask how the letter to the FCC is coming!
I don't see anything wrong with a "high level exec" or anyone else saying that if you care about the issue, contact your congressman. Who are YOU to say that all employees agree with what he wants them to say? Meanwhile he has pointed out to them just who to talk to, one way or the other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
its pretty easy for an employer to check if their employees have followed through on such a "recommendation."
The letter is clearly written as a suggestion, not a demand. Yes, it uses standard scare tactics to suggest that if their point of view loses, there will be massive layoffs, but it doesn't actually say you'll be fired or even disciplined in any way for failing to participate in this particular lobbying effort. Thus, if you're fired and you can show that you were fired because you didn't do this, you can likely sue for damages and win (especially if you can show others who didn't participate were also fired). Even in at-will states, you're begging for a lawsuit if you fire an employee for something like this.
Along the same lines, my employer has its very own Political Action Committee. I occasionally get emails asking me to join the PAC and help advance "our interests". I ignore those emails, and am not a member of the PAC, nor have I ever donated a penny to it. And yet, I've not been fired nor have I been denied promotions or raises.
Any large organization will want to control its masses.
True. The big difference between an employer trying to influence its employees politics and a union trying to influence its members politics is that an employer can fire employees, while a union can't. That's kind of a large difference in terms of power influence. Union officials are also generally elected positions, so the power flows the other way as well.
AccountKiller
The Sierra Club and FSF are voluntary associations of people whose whole bases for association is a common ideology: members of those organizations pay the leaders of those organizations specifically to help them acheive particular shared ideological aims. So, advice from those leaders on steps the members can take to make the money that they pay to acheive those ends be more effective is consistent with the job those members are paying the professional staff of the organization to do. And the members of the Sierra Club and FSF aren't dependent on those organizations, generally, for their livelihood.
AT&T employees aren't, as a general rule, voluntarily paying AT&T management to help them defeat net neutrality, and are, OTOH, dependent on AT&T for their jobs, so the circumstances aren't even remotely parallel.
Of course, this *is* AT&T, a company that was allowed to get away with blatant violations of the law and snooping on American citizens without a warrant.
In fact, the one thing we know with absolute certainty is that they *can* tell if the employees have followed the CEO's suggestion.
Oh, yeah . . that. . .
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
A union's relationship to its members is more analogous to a corporation's relationship to its shareholders than a corporation's relationship to its employees. Sure, you can have bad managers (and union leadership are managers of the union, though they have different titles) acting in the managers' self-interest rather than members'/shareholders' shared interest in either case, but a corporation's management doesn't even in theory work in the interest of the employees, it works in the interest of the shareholders.
So there is a pretty big difference between union leadership making recommendations on political actions to the people whose shared interests they are paid to represent, and a corporation's management making recommendation for political action to their "human resources".
What's the big deal?
Preaching politics on the company dime is right up there with promoting religion during office hours. It's your employer abusing their captive audience. If you don't go along, you could be seen as not being a team player. You're getting paid to do a job, not be a political pawn. It worked so well for the health insurance companies, having their employees out acting like dickwads at public meetings. Be sure and remind them to change their employer branded clothing to look more like a real grassroots uprising.
And it was wrong. I remember when the internet went private. I didn't hear AT&T or any of the others complaining about all that new infrastructure and business they inherited. Now that the system needs major upgrades no one wants to pony up. Instead they want to find ways to tax traffic, make money without making any additional investment. The Wall Street model. Net neutrality rules threaten that grand plan. They might not be able to cover those multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. Oh, noes!
Tell you what, if those circuits are that unprofitable, sell them and get out of the infrastructure business. No one owes AT&T a living. If it's too tough out there, get into banking. Corporate whiners are the worst.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Anytime a major ISP has tried something fishy they have been slapped down hard by customers.
Sort of like when Apple tied the iPhone to the ATT network. Oh man the shit storm that erupted from customer sent them packing...
Sort of like when Charter started imposing bandwidth caps on customers who had their advertised "unlimited" internet access. Yup, turned that one right around.
Sort of like when *any* cellular network charged for both incoming and outgoing SMS packets. Good thing that uproar ended that practice.
Sort of like when ISPs started redirecting failed DNS website queries to their own ad-laden search pages. God I never thought that would stop!
What you describe is how it *should* work, and believe me we would all love if it did. Unfortunately that's not how the real world always works. Fact of the matter is there just isn't enough competition in ISPs for customers to really vote with their wallets. If customers can't vote with their wallets, companies don't have consequences for their actions. ATT does something you don't like... are you going to go to another DSL provider? That still uses ATT pipes? Internet backbones are still a natural monopoly in their respective regions and I don't expect some new technology will come around to change that. As much as we hate giving the government more power here, I would rather see some decisions made by a group who is at least remotely answerable to me versus a company that is only answerable to its shareholders.
+1 Disagree