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About 40,000 Unionized Verizon Workers Walk Off the Job (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: In one of the largest U.S. strikes in recent years, nearly 40,000 Verizon workers walked off the job on Wednesday after contract talks hit an impasse. The event got a boost as U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders joined them at a Brooklyn rally ahead of the New York primary next week. The strike was called by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers that jointly represent employees with such jobs as customer services representatives and network technicians in Verizon Communications Inc's traditional wireline phone operations. The strike could affect service in Verizon's Fios Internet, telephone and TV services businesses across several U.S. East Coast states, including New York, Massachusetts and Virginia. Verizon and the unions have been talking since last June over the company's plans to cut healthcare and pension-related benefits over a three-year period. The workers have been without a contract since its agreement expired in August. Issues include healthcare, offshoring call center jobs, temporary job relocations and pensions.
The Verizon CEO ripped Bernie in a FB post, about his "contemptible" platform of trying to make business decisions into a moral issue. Probably the wrong response at the wrong time.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/...
Oh I hope they get what they want.
However, what they wanted was probably the best medical plan and retirement package I have ever seen. 100% full med/dental/vision and 100% full retirement which includes the full insurance package after 25 years. Plus a 6.75% raise over 2 years.
Neither side wanted to budge. The management was offering about 80% of that. Which is comparable to the rest of the company.
The root of the issue is management has refused to actually put money into managing the network they own. They are selling it off as fast as they can. They bought the rest of wireless from Vodaphone and then are selling off wireline to frontier. Not exactly sure what the thinking is here.
I can certainly understand that businesses, in lean times, need to take steps to keep afloat to avoid bankruptcy, but when you're close to earning $12B in profit a year, cutting pension and healthcare benefits is just mean-spirited. Verizon is destroying the middle class that it is hoping will buy its FIOS and wireless services, and that's both bad for business and bad for the country, and I don't want to support those sorts of actions.
Verizon wireless did a similarly mean-spirited thing last year and moved thousands of customer support jobs from "expensive" SoCal to "cheap" Kentucky, putting a few of my pals out of a job, actually. Despite good wireless service, I cancelled my Verizon Wireless accounts immediately, and when Retention called to ask why, I told them exactly why, asked the caller where they worked, and advised them to start looking for a new job because their position was surely going to move to a cheaper area of the country too.
Isn't $12B in profits ENOUGH? Vote with your wallets folks, and be sure to tell Verizon why you're leaving.
One of the most important tenets of Libertarianism is your individual right to sell your labor. Voluntarily choosing to sell your labor via a labor union isn't incompatible with Libertarianism.
I have two issues with some unions:
1. An individual should never be forced to join a union. An individual should join a union if it makes sense for the individual. Too often unions enrich themselves while providing little else to the rank and file.
2. There should be no unions in Government work. No functions of our Government should be at the mercy of a union.
Beyond that, I support voluntary membership in private sector unions.
It's a nice contrast to the ultra-Libertarian crowd in IT who doesn't realize they're being taken advantage of.
To the contrary; the ultra-Libertarians are hyper-aware of how much they are being taken advantage of. They either:
A) Do not care because of other reasons they work there that are beneficial to them.
B) Take action to correct the disparity.
C) Leave quickly for other shores, which is super easy to do these days.
I'm not sure how much you think technical workers can really be taken advantage of in todays job market...
On the flip side, I always feel sorry for the unionized people because they are drug into things like strikes they may have wanted nothing to do with, and on top of that take a pay hit for the pleasure to keep union bosses in yachts for doing nothing. Personally, if anyone is going to have a yacht I'd rather it be me; not sure why you support outright theft from workers but each to his own I suppose.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wireless is not involved. The people who are striking are the ones who physically connect stuff with wires, which is the opposite of wireless.
Verizon's wired business is shrinking because of people going wireless. The people who connect wires are suffering because people are going wireless.
Is there still a number of wires left to be connected? Sure, because wireless isn't completely wireless. But it's a lot less demand for the skills of connecting wires compared to pre-wireless days.
You mentioned Verizon Wireless as if it were a separate company. And it is a separate issue, since these are customer support jobs that could be done from the moon for all it matters.
If you take the losses or slowdowns on wired business, and consider that wireless offsets those declines, then wireless is a money printing business for Verizon. I think your message is better off focusing on these sorts of points, not global all-business-lines profit. And you'll make a far stronger argument. I'm actually a little bit on the other side of the argument now. Like 98% with you instead of 99%.
"Corporations gain bargaining power by (allegedly) shareholders pooling capital. It's very hard to find someone who'll argue that corporations shouldn't act in their own interests. Why is it therefore wrong for labor to do the same? It isn't, and it's way past time for workers to figure that out."
My father (a college professor not a union member) put it this way when I was in my late teens in the early 70s: If companies can have 10 people sit around a table and decide what to pay the worker, the worker should be able to have 10 people sit around a table and decide what they will work for.
Unions are a special interest group just like AARP, AAA, NRA, etc etc.