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Verizon Employees End Strike
An anonymous reader writes "Verizon today announced that the approximately 45,000 wireline employees represented by the CWA and IBEW that have been on strike will return to work beginning Monday night, August 22nd, without new collective bargaining agreements. Since the strike began two weeks ago, Verizon has been battling criminal acts of sabotage against its network facilities and union picketers intimidating non-union replacement workers and illegally blocking garage and work center entrances. One union picketer even went as far as to instruct his young daughter to stand in front of a Verizon truck to illegally block it from coming back to a Verizon work center in New Jersey. Verizon said the wireline employees now on strike would be working under the terms of the contracts that expired on Saturday, August 6th. The contracts will be extended with no specific deadline for achieving new collective bargaining agreements so that the parties can take the time required to resolve the critical issues, the company said."
Unions committing criminal acts to "bargain". No wonder a lot of people don't like them.
Poor Verizon. Profits have only doubled to $4.6 billion (http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/25/verizon-profits-nearly-double-but-miss-wall-street-expectations/) and yet it's trying to cut benefits to its workers.
Another corporate-sponsored propaganda piece brought to you by "anonymous"
Nothing about the $252 million the top 5 Verison executives were paid the last 5 years. Nothing about Verison demanding cuts from workers when Verison profits were up.
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That summary would be a joke if it was even remotely funny. Talk about missing the plot. Everyone should be proud of the CWA and the IBEW workers who organized one of the most important and successful strikes in recent memory. Let's get the facts straight: On the eve of the strike, Verizon announced it would pay a special $10 billion dividend to shareholders. At the same time, its negotiators were pushing for $1 billion in concessions from workers. The company has made $3 billion already this year, and nearly $20 billion in the last four years.
So Verizon, which has been insanely profitable in recent years, decided to reward it's hardworking employees by attempting to slash their health care benefits, freeze their pensions, denie new hires pensions and health care benefits and by attempting to prevent new hires from organizing in unions. All the while Verizon has been outsourcing more and more positions to firms overseas. Scabs struck 15 picketers during the two week strike. And FOX news, the likely source of this so called "summary", has been demonizing the hard working union members 24/7. While Verizon shareholders are swimming in the dough and Verizon execs laugh all the way to the bank.
I personally will never give Verizon one red cent until they start to do right by their employees. Greedy friggin corporate bastards, the lot of 'em.
TFA does not post any corroboration and nothing from the the side of the strikers.
Without further evidence, I'm going to write this article off as anti-union propaganda.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I don't normally find such slant in Slashdot summaries (except when it's pro-open-source, obviously, which is part of the reason I come here). Using the word "illegal" and "criminal" repeatedly to describe one side of a labor dispute is just beyond the journalistic pale. I know this is "citizen journalism", but it doesn't have to read like some anti-union blog.
But the union won... They were fine with the current contracts, the issue was Verizon wanted the gut health care and retirement benefits. So going back to work under the old contract is a win for them...
Nah, whats nuts is you thinking Verizon lost money during a strike.
Yeah, unions sure are evil! Thanks, Slashdot! Let's ignore instances of striking workers helping scabs to make sure they don't get hurt. (Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/19/1008575/-As-Verizon-uses-inexperienced-replacement-workers,-delays-mount). Let's also ignore that they're trying to cut their wages and benefits even as Verizon has experienced record profits.
Once upon a time, people looked at union worker's higher pay rates and benefits and said, "I want the same for my family." Thus, the modern middle class was born, and the gap between rich and poor was narrowed to the smallest in American hisotry.
Today, people say, "why should those union guys have it so good? I want them to suffer just like me!" And now the middle class has turned against itself, and the gap widens to historic levels. I hope it'll turn back around some day, but our corporate masters have gotten really good at turning us against ourselves, and at labor unions that exist to help us.
It's amazing isn't it? The reason being is because they've successfully taught people that they too can be millionaires. Little do they know that class jumping is NEARLY impossible.
This is the worst the Verizon strike-busters could come up with? It perplexes me how many news stories I've read about how "one union picketer even went as far as to instruct his young daughter to stand in front of a Verizon truck to illegally block it". If you watch the video, HE stands in front of the moving truck, which stops. Then she walks over of her own accord. Then the instruction part comes in, he tells her to stand in front of the stopped truck alongside the cameraman who is obviously standing there as well in front of the stopped truck. She holds up her sign, the cameraman films. Then he goes over and yells at the scab who took his job for less than a minute. As happens every time, they then let the trucks go through.
Illegal is a great word. It is illegal to murder and rape. It is also illegal for me to loan one of my DVDs to a friend so that he can copy it to his computer. It is illegal to smoke marijuana. In virtually all industrialized countries but this one, what is illegal is for scabs to replace striking workers. In the good old, God-fearing, Libya-bombing, Iraq-bombing, Afghanistan-bombing USA though, it is illegal for workers to delay scabs from taking their jobs.
Verizon is one of the largest examples of a company which does nothing but profit from its monopolies. It spends tons of money on state and federal lobbying, and has a lock on a portion of wireless wavelength, and an almost total and complete lock on the local loop. The majority of its stock is held by the very wealthiest of Americans (over 40% is held by the wealthiest 1%, and the 51% mark is only slightly larger), and the majority of those people inherited virtually all of their wealth. The majority of the majority owners are heirs who sit on their asses and expropriate dividend checks from not their government-lobbied, government-granted near-monopolies, but the people in this video, the people out there doing all the work and creating all the wealth for the company.
I know the USA is a piece of garbage, ruled by these rich parasite heirs, aside from their religious wacko pals and other assorted asocial Tea Party nuts, so there's not much use getting over-exerted about any of this. The words criminal and illegal really mean nothing here. Before World War I, for workers to form a union in the USA was itself a criminal act. It was illegal. As I said, in other countries, these scabs replacing striking workers is illegal. In the good old USA workers replacing the scabs taking their jobs is illegal. Just like breaking DRM and all the other nonsense. We are all slaves to these rich parasite heirs trying to extract money from their monopolies and the wage slaves they have working for them. It's naturally American to be filled with vitriol and hatred for the average working class Joe standing with his union brothers to try and earn a living wage. Following authority, passively licking the boots of the lazy rich heirs who own the majority of Verizon stock, with Almighty God watching over all is the natural order of things. The reward will be in the "next life".
(and WRT to who references to who owns stocks, is an heir and such, you can consult sources like the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, Forbes 400 richest list and other sources).
Gut health care? Making union employees pay for a portion of their health care like every non union employee does is gutting?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Less than 7% of private workers in the US are unionized, yet you see it as a "cartel". Verizon has a monopoly on land lines in the North East and mid-Atlantic (with AT&T and Qwest covering 99% of the rest of the country), yet you don't see that as a cartel. Verizon, Sprint and AT&Tmobile are three companies who also control over 99% of US wireless, yet you don't see them as a cartel. The wealthiest 1% of the country, most of whom inherited all of their wealth, owns the majority of bonds, over 40% of stocks and so forth - but they're not a cartel.
The average, working, wealth-producing person is not cartelized at all in the US. The rich parasite heirs who you worship are who rules the US. One of the reasons the US economy has had sluggish growth for decades, while the second largest economy in the world, China's, has been growing at 10% a year for 30 years. Not much will change in that respect in the US - the mass of boot-lickers like you, along with the fundamentalist crazies, will succeed in holding the US down as the rest of the world passes it by...
Yes. Getting rid of benefits with no replacement is gutting. Now if they wanted to raise everyone's pay by the amount it would cost for them to each individually replace this benefit then fine, but they are essentially decreasing the salary of the workers.
Get a web developer
"Um... by definition [corporations] are unthinking by their very nature... people who are either unwilling or unable to represent themselves (ie [shareholders]) band together and let others ([CEOs]) think and negotiate for them.
I have never been a [corporate stock holder], nor will I ever... because I am competent enough to represent myself.
Not that I have a particular opinion on the Verizon strike specifically, but why is collective action of capital holders the pinnacle of the modern economic system, but the collective action of laborers is destroying society as we know it?
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
Don't you understand that when you take a job, you negotiate for a "Total Compensation" package. If the value of that is $100,000, and $25,000 of it is in 'benefits', if you cut the 'benefits' by $10,000 you need to INCREASE TAKE HOME PAY by ten grand PLUS the lost tax benefit...
In other words, you don't SAVE any money by cutting benefits, because unless your goal is to FUCK PEOPLE OVER, then you're going to be increasing their take home, so your "Total Comp" package remains the same....
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
So, following your logic: If an employee has a contract for total compensation of X dollars which includes $1000 per month in health insurance. When the insurance premiums go up 10% the following year, the union employee should then pay the extra $100 because the contract was for a fixed amount? The article mentioned that the contract had expired, I see NOTHING wrong with a new contract that requires that ALL employees pay a portion of health care costs.
In the real (non union) world you don't negotiate for 'Total Compensation' in dollars, you negotiate for salary (which is usually a fixed amount) and benefits (which are usually not fixed).
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
The problem is health care costs are going up, substantially. Verizon cannot shoulder all of it, so they are asking for workers to pay some as well. Verizon cannot afford to give the equivalent of a 10-20% raise to everyone, especially in a bad economy for a field that is losing a lot of customers (wireline access).
The fact is, things change, and the workers cannot be expected to be insulated from all changes. Or at least non-union workers cannot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That was a really harsh response. You could have said, "I try to live with three months of expenses saved away." Instead, you said "I'm better than you because I don't live paycheck to paycheck."
That's why in my country we have a constitutional right to go on strike WITH PAY.
Unless a judge rules the strike is illegal, the company still has to pay you. Otherwise, we get situations like you describe.
I wouldn't be jealous either. You have to consider what you are dealing with when talking to Americans. Its a country heading downhill at breakneck speed toward fascism. The 2012 elections here, provided we make it to them without imploding, will tell the tale of our future, which looks grim either way. We are an incredibly polarized country with a propensity towards violence which promises to be volatile in the near future.
Our trade policies, which the rich corporations have fostered through our corrupt politicians, have gutted our entire industry. The jobless are growing, tent cities are springing up outside of our cities and people are homeless. Yet we continue to whistle past the graveyard, ignoring it all. We just had a showdown in our congress where the rich won, badly needed social programs will be cut so that the rich can enjoy the lowest taxes in decades.
Why aren't we rioting in the streets? Chalk it up to weapons grade propaganda, a police state second to none, and an under educated population that worships the rich and corporations like a cargo cult.
If you think you are immune to our evils in Britain, you are dead wrong. From this madness, multinational corporations have grown to power that aren't content to suck the marrow from our bones, they want everyone's, including yours. Corporations have been allowed to grow into monsters here. We were their egg. They are beyond our control now, because they control us.
All in all, it was our ignorance and greed that took us down. If nothing, we are a cautionary tale. So, make a snack, and watch as we sink into oblivion. We are collapsing under our own weight while locked in a vice grip, strangled by those in power. My advice to your country; Burn every Wal-Mart you have to the ground. Hound those who run them down and hang them from light poles down town. Protect your jobs, protect your industry or bow to your Chinese Overlords, they are the real winner when the smoke has cleared.
Take the Red Pill.
Funny, the UK spends less than half of the GDP per capita compared to the US, for a similar standard of care (and encompassing the entirety of our population, not just those who can afford it).
The propaganda machine worked very well to convince Americans that socialised health care systems were backward, stone age, expensive disasters when they are really.... not. They are not perfect, and will never claim that they are - the UK NHS does need some serious attention, but it is light years ahead of the US system. It's not even close.
You're also one to talk about "black holes" in the national budget, keeping two wars off the books. The annual cost of the UK's healthcare provision (approximately 50 billion pounds, or 82/83 billion USD) is nothing compared to that, or the huge hole opened by the bush era tax cuts for the wealthy.
The UK spends 8% of its GDP per capita on healthcare and *everyone* is covered. The US spends 16% of its GDP per capita and there are millions of Americans who are not covered, and a huge number who get into crippling debt if they get sick.
The NHS is far from a "black hole" in our budget - it is certainly one of the most expensive things by a long chalk, but it is very cost effective for the care it provides. It suffered 20 years of neglect under a right wing government in the 80s that wanted to kill it but knew they couldn't do it outright, so they tried to starve it to death, and it is still recovering to this day (with bungling of modernisation by both sides of the political spectrum in the wake of the Thatcher years), but it is one of the shining examples of modern Britain to come out of the post war years.
Don't believe everything the right wing media tells you about "death panels" and "doctor rationing" and "financially crippling to the economy" - they are what as known as "lies".
We certainly don;t have the best example in Europe (Sweden and Norway are far better, as is France), but we are head and shoulders above the US. I have extensive experience of both systems, so I am well positioned to be able to directly compare them.
It's a shame, because the standard of care in US hospitals is excellent, there's just a massive impenetrable wall in front of the entrances, or more accurately, the hospitals are behind huge moats with sharks and rocks. You can buy a boat to get across, or you can pay insurance to be able to rent one if you need it. We just built a bridge over the moat here in the UK, and everyone chips in a few pounds per month from their paycheque to keep the bridge in good repair (but you can still go with private insurance and private healthcare if you like). The fact that everyone pays a little means that the costs are much, much, much lower for everyone.
The discussion on these kind of topics is so vitrolic, so filled with hatred from all sides that you got to wonder how long it will be before the US just tears itself apart. Personally for me the flag waving alone is enough, nobody has to shout out that hard they are a nation standing together unless they known that it is all a lie. No American cares anything about another American unless that other person might be getting a penny that the first doesn't.
So, some people have health care benefits and you don't. Is that a reason to hate all unions? Maybe you should fix your own issue yourselve and not demand everyone else has the same shitty contract you do.
When even South Africa is now moving to national health care, perhaps it is time for Americans to realize the most expensive system in the world that scores as one of the worsed just isn't working.
But hey, continue to fight each other to death over things that other countries solved over half a century ago. Meanwhile US production is going down and down and you country is falling apart around you. Fixed those bridges yet?
2012 going to be interesting. The republicans did it this time, every single one of them is utterly batshit insane. The democrats? They can hardly get rid of Obama but the racist, oops right wingers hate his gut just for being black. Even if he gets re-elected the senate cripples him, the old US idea of both houses keeping each other in check has become a strangle hold on the nation with the tea party putting in the final squeeze. Everyone with a brain knows their ideas will bankrupt the US but they can't be ignored as the lunatic fringe they are.
The US won't fall because someone else was smarter, it will fall because it kills itself from within. It is funny to see from the outside, you got extreme right wingers trying to determine who is the least or most extreme right winger. Mean while the roads are falling apart, education is going to hell and production has ground to a halt with everyone buying Chinese.
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