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.

Comments

No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't affect customer service in any way, it's impossible to do worse.

Re:No problem

[Bloody Bastard]

Be careful of what you ask for.

Re: No problem

[ShanghaiBill]

People standing up to large corporate interests who just want to keep cutting jobs, pay, and benefits is a good thing.

How is striking going to convince a corporation to stop offshoring and automating jobs? It seems to me that it will convince them to do more. Look at what UAW strikes did to Detroit.

Re: No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, car companies started manufacturing elsewhere, then figured out building a car across the world isn't actually that economical due to increased transport costs which are only going to increase over time.

Now you have other car companies coming to the midwest like Toyota and Nissan to build their cars closer to their markets. They actually pay a living wage and provide reasonable benefits so their workers don't feel the need to unionize. Imagine that, you treat your employees well and then they treat you well.

Re: No problem

[TheRaven64]

They're also employing a lot fewer people. One of the problems that cities that relied on various forms of manufacturing have seen is that greater automation means fewer employees per factory. It's then also easier for the company to pay them well, because labour is a far smaller proportion of their total costs. When a factory is employing 10,000 people to manually assemble whatever it's producing, a 5% pay increase is a huge cut of their profits and may be enough to push them into the red. When they're paying 100-1000 people to manage, maintain, and repair automated assembly lines, a 10-20% pay increase has a far smaller effect on the balance sheet. The 9,000 other people still need to make a living somehow though.

Re: No problem

[RabidReindeer]

The world is full of artificially inflated bumps. Just look at executive salaries over the last 3 decades. Do they really work 200x as many hours as anyone else? Do they have Cosmic Wisdom that no one else has? Has their productivity gone up multi-fold over the last 20 years like line-level workers (who are making in purchasing terms less than they did when they were less productive)?

No, but they have particularly effective union - the Good Old Boys Network.

There is no practical reason why we cannot outsource the executive functions to New Delhi and pay them 7 grand a year. We don't do it because they have an "in" with the directors that line-level workers don't. They pay their Union Dues in quid-pro-quo instead of formal paycheck deductions.

Re: No problem

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I agree that any power can be abused, and that the US unions in particular have a lot of baggage. But we are in a period of time that is very employer-friendly, due to the influences of corporate lobbying and influence. The only realistic way to push back is unionization and worker solidarity.

Automation of tasks and the gradual phasing out of manual tasks has been going on since the industrial revolution, and shows no signs of slowing down. As we increasingly delegate physically demanding tasks to robots and automated systems, efficiency is greatly increased, and the overall demanded workload on humans should be proportionally reduced. In an ideal society, this increased efficiency and reduced overall workload should mean that everyone could work less while maintaining or even increasing their standard of living.

Instead, the majority of the results of this increased automation are sequestered in the pockets of the wealthy few, put in tax shelters and deliberately kept from stimulating the economy. While they amass wealth, a desperate underclass is created, sedated by mindless reality TV and The American Dream that they are actually just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and that they'll make it big any day know if they just keep their heads down and work as hard as they can. Any day now.

Increased automation could make life easier and better for everyone, but it's fucking over the majority, thanks to corporate greed.

Good for them. Techies take note!

[ErichTheRed]

I'm always glad to see union workers standing up for what they want, and I've never worked in a position where I've even had the opportunity to join a union. It's a nice contrast to the ultra-Libertarian crowd in IT who doesn't realize they're being taken advantage of.

If IT and software development were unionized, or better, entry was controlled by a professional organization, people would have a better quality of life. The H-1B visa abuse wouldn't exist and employers who routinely understaff positions and demand 70-hour work weeks to make up for it would be curbed. If we had a professional organization instead of a union, we could actually train new entrants instead of relying on overpaid consultants and/or dealing with incompetence. Instead, we have the lone ranger mentality, and people are convinced that nothing bad will ever be done by their employer.

From what I've read, the union is entirely justified in this case - Verizon is trying to slowly take away things like employer-paid health care and hoping people don't notice by giving them a salary increase. These things are basics, and should be part of everyone's benefits package. It's executive and shareholder greed, pure and simple. Verizon makes massive amounts of profit and their workers should get their fair share, period.