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17,000 AT&T Workers Go On Strike In California and Nevada (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Approximately 17,000 workers in AT&T's traditional wired telephone business in California and Nevada walked out on strike on Wednesday, marking the most serious labor action against the carrier in years. The walkout -- formally known as a grievance strike -- occurred after AT&T changed the work assignments of some of the technicians and call center employees in the group, the Communications Workers of America union said. The union would not say how long the strike might last. A contract covering the group expired last year and there has been little progress in negotiations over sticking points like the outsourcing of call center jobs overseas, stagnant pay, and rising health care costs. The union said it planned to file an unfair labor charge with the National Labor Relations Board over the work assignment changes. "A walkout is not in anybody's best interest and it's unfortunate that the union chose to do that," an AT&T spokesman told Fortune. "We're engaged in discussion with the union to get these employees back to work as soon as possible."
Luckily the number of landline customers is zero.
A walkout is not in anybody's best interest and it's unfortunate that the union chose to do that
I'm generally anti-union because they almost always devolve into pieces of shit, but fuck AT&T and fuck the obvious bullshit line about a strike not being in anyone's best interest. It's in the best interest of the union (and hopefully of the employees).
Well he campaigned on the idea of giving power back to the people, so if he were an honest man, he'd be on the workers'/union's side here. However it's quite obvious that he's the biggest, greatest liar in the world, as well as being a traditional conservative corporate whore, so he's going to be on AT&T's side.
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
Strikers replaced by H1B scabs.
I'm not a member of a union, and used to be anti-union, but the destruction of unions paves the way to total employee exploitation. Notice that pay has been flat for years, but for Corporate AT&T in 2016:
*Consolidated revenues of $40.5 billion, up more than 22%
*Operating income up 13.6%
*Net income up 10.6%
*Cash from operations of $10.3 billion, up 12.5%
*Free cash flow of $4.8 billion, up 8.4%
*Diluted EPS of $0.55 as reported and $0.72 diluted adjusted EPS compared to $0.59 and $0.70 in the year-ago quarter.
All the while the workers get no increases. Every single worker in the US (outside of a few high pay tech positions) is suffering due to corporate greed. A few people at the top have received all the increases for all the productivity gains since the 1980s. If you care about what this country will look like for your kids, you really should care about this. The reality is, you are likely not someone at the top.
California is leading the resistance! Woo-hoo!
Trump has always been anti-union, something those white union workers who voted for him have seem to have forgotten.
There are 17,000 new job openings in California and Nevada.
Alas, as the aliens observing us reluctantly realize, humans have short memories. Like environmental laws, civil rights (and even... democracy), collective bargaining came about because our great-grandparents went through hella crazy Pinkerton shit, and our grandparents stood up and got shot until they managed to force change. But alas, our grandparents died off and our parents grew up not knowing what the fuck, and anyway global markets came along so that everything is cheap in China, and now the politicians are telling us that the only thing between us and a trophy wife and the top-floor suite of the Trump Hotel is unions and job-killing environment and food-inspection laws.
and the aliens say, isn't that the shit these creatures fought so hard for just a few generations ago?
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
And this year in America
about 17,000 americans will be murdered by americans.
about 200,000 americans will be killed by the doctor through medical mistakes
and more americans will be killed by sharks, lightening strikes, and falling coke machines than killed by terrorists.
Given that the US imprisons a higher percentage of the population than any other country, has a murder rate much higher than other 1st world countries it would make just as much sense to keep US citizens from being able to go anywhere else in the world, because those countries have a right to keep their citizens safe too.
And in the mean time, millions of tourists are also avoiding the USA, costing billions of dollars, and thousands of jobs.
They are also campaigning against US corporations not paying taxes
Trump wants trade barriers against imports with "US first", those barriers will be mirrored by other countries , put in place on American exports, $2 Trillion worth as every other country goes "USA last".
96% of people are not US citizens and 80% of world GDP does not involved the USA.
You are not locking people out, you are locking yourselves in, which will only server to increase the rate at which the US falls.
The murder rate in Mexico is 15 / 100,000 people. The murder rate in the US is 5 / 100,000 : sorry to poop on your little theory.
Terror attacks are rare in the US because we've kept the terrorists out. Now there's a concerted effort to ship terrorists to the western world. Europe has changed from attacks being just as rare as here, to attacks being common. Let's not have that here. Islamic terrorists killed over 22,000 people last year, and it's an ongoing and increasing campaign. Keep the attacks here rare, please.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Trump has always been anti-union, something those white union workers who voted for him have seem to have forgotten.
Many union members in closed shop states (including California, but not Nevada) don't actually like unions, and are only members because paying union dues is a condition of employment.
Murder rate
UK 0.9/100,000
Canada 1.5/100,000
Germany 0.9/100,000
France 1.2/100,000
New Zealand 0.9/100,000
Australia 1.0/100,000
Spain 0.7/100,000
China 0.8/100,000
Japan 0.3/100,000
Italy 0.8/100,000
Sweden 0.9/100,000
Iceland 0.3/100,000
And the site I am looking at says the USA is 3.9/100,000 which puts it 108th out of 218 countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Almost half the countries in the world are safer than the USA.
And the US imprisonment rate is nearly 700/100,000
Canada 114/100,000
Germany 78/100,000
France 103/100,000
New Zealand 202/100,000
Australia 152/100,000
Spain 131/100,000
China 118/100,000
Japan 47/100,000
Italy 89/100,000
Sweden 53/100,000
Iceland 45/100,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So yeah, most countries could indeed be safer if they kept americans out, they seem to have a high rate of crime and murder compared to other 1st world civilised countries. That wall is looking better and better, not to keep Mexicans out, but to keep Americans in, Canada should take a close look at this, who knows maybe they can get the US to pay.
I hope the union members get what they want. People are all too willing to give up all of their bargaining power and be at the mercy of employers. I happen to be one of those strange people who would like to see a little more loyalty on the part of both employers and employees. It's not good for either side to have a revolving door - employers lose valuable trained people, employees become modern-day Okies migrating from employer to employer with no consistency in their lives. If you have that loyalty, and a good work environment, and good salary/benefits, then you wouldn't need a union. Unfortunately, we're back on the other side of the pendulum now, and I think it might be time for collective bargaining to make a comeback.
Think about it rationally -- even if you're the l33test, baddest full-stack DevOps Ninja out there, you're still at the mercy of an employer who is actively trying to pay you as little as possible. If you work in Silicon Valley, you're in a salary bubble right now because Apps! Wait until the bubble pops and employers have their pick of 500 DevOps Ninjas, some of whom are willing to work for practically nothing. Or, they have their pick of thousands of H-1B candidates who work for even less, or could just have all the Ninja-ing done in India and pay less than that! And of course, all that savings goes directly into their pockets, increasing the income disparity and making life miserable for everyone except the executives. I don't think there's anything wrong with a union standing up and fighting against the offshoring of their jobs...or look how many IT jobs might have been saved had the H-1B visa been lobbied against. This is what unions do.
Face it, everybody needs a job, and everybody needs a job whose salary keeps up with inflation and lets them earn more as they age. Society is set up around this, and it's not going to change easily. No one is going to buy houses anymore once they see they can't count on their employers to keep them employed. People won't even take out car loans if they don't feel they have income to pay them back. Unless we have a nuclear war and have to rebuild the system with 1% of the population, you're not going to get people to give up using money to transfer value amongst themselves. I think unions and professional organizations are a good limiting factor on the unchecked greed of business owners. No business owner is going to be nice and share their profits equitably among their workers unless something forces them to. A union is an employee's best hope of getting as many table scraps from the executive dining room table as possible -- no one employee, not even a DevOps Ninja, will get the management class to give in to anything they want.
https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs...
In the period 2004-20013 3066 Americans were killed due to terrorists, 2902 were killed in 9/11
In the period 2004 -20013 over 126,000 americans were murdered by americans.
If you remove 9/11 as a statistical outlier you have are 128 time more likely to be murdered than killed by a terrorist.If you assume half the people know their murderer you are over 60 times more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a terrorist.
Now lets compare this to deaths in Iraq
https://www.theguardian.com/ne...
"The key figures IBC found are:
14,705 (13%) of all documented civilian deaths were reported as being directly caused by the US-led coalition. The report notes that
Of the 4,040 civilian victims of US-led coalition forces for whom age data was available, 1,201 (29%) were children"
And that was just for one year, over the same 9 years it could be higher than 150,000 deaths and climbing
The USA is much less a "hero" than you are led to believe.
And you wonder why people from these countries have a strong anti-US sentiment ?
Look how much hate the US has towards muslims, yet the deaths caused by them are insignificant compared to the number of muslims killed by US led forces.
War sucks. Lets not have one in our homeland. This is not a complicated concept.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Then keep your troops, your drones, your guns, your bombs, etc etc out of other peoples countries.
Its not rocket science, when you kill people in another country, those people get pissed off and want revenge
In that regard they are no different to americans it seems
They DONT have drones or planes or missiles, so their "weapon of choice" is suicide bombers and the like, the only effective weapon available for their use.
For good reason, as western imperialist assholes have been fucking with them for the last century. Overthrowing Iran's democracy, installing despots like Saddam and the Shah, killing half a million kids with sanctions and calling it 'worth it' - your shitbaggery started long before Predator Drone strikes.
This strike, had it been called while President Barack "Lawnchair" Obama was in office, would have likely ended in no progress for either side, with the workers going back to the same shitty situation they walked out from (ultimately a loss for the workers as they would see no raise while their cost of living increases). That would have been bad timing.
Now we have a GOP that is still drunk on power calling the shots in DC. These workers might as well go take a long walk off a short pier at this point. I would be surprised if they are able to return to any jobs at all. There is no protection left for them, and if they thought otherwise they will soon find how wrong they are.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Because the United States is hard to attack. It's surrounded by the world's largest oceans and two large, friendly nations.
Oh, do go fuck yourself, racist Western Exceptionalist. It's not Muslims invading, overthrowing and bombing countries on the other side of the planet from them for bullshit reasons- that's what you are doing to them. And all the 'Islamic terrorism' you can wank on about is either:
1) Directly sponsored by the United States, as when it funds and arms ISIS and Al Queda in Syria or Yemen
2) Blowback from your imperalistic shitbaggery. Want to know how to create a 'terrorist' in one simple step? You take a man who's done nothing to you and murder his family with a drone strike or a regime change.
This is a private matter of a company and its employees, government must not be allowed to get involved in the first place.
You can't handle the truth.
Las Vegas here. I can attest that most of our construction unions are shit for people actual skill.
With actual skill. Sorry about that lil buzzed
Comparing the number of deaths from terrorism with those resulting from medical failures might change the narrative completely.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Oh man! I would mod you up if I could! :)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Europe has changed from attacks being just as rare as here, to attacks being common.
Maybe European citizens should also establish 'the right to bear arms'?
Let's not have that here.
Then buy all means, keep the guns!
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Fuck! "by", I mean.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
The freeloading "problem" only exists because unions negotiate for closed shops in right-to-work states but Unions don't want employees knowing about their Beck rights. We'll see if the requirement for businesses to post notifications of Beck rights for employees will be reinstated under Trump after Obama had removed it.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
puke (finger in mouth)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Then keep your troops, your drones, your guns, your bombs, etc etc out of other peoples countries.
Sure, we could take the position of weakness. Or, we could keep stomping anyone who annoys us, and protect our borders. That works too. But we can't do half-and-half.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That's why there were several attacks in one week in Germany? That's why Parliament was attacked? That's why Turkey says you should be afraid to walk the streets?
It's convenient to blane the US, but it's not realistic.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
we've kept the terrorists out
No, we just have a different sort of terrorism here.
... Is when they get fired municipalities can absorb them and thousands more for the "Dig Once" pending legislation.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Bullshit. Unions drive up wages and benefits through collective bargaining for that sector of the economy, then people who don't want to pay the dues necessary to earn those higher wages and benefits want to take advantage of them anyway. There's a word for those sort of people.
Freeloaders.
Now, did you or did you not go into your local Chamber of Commerce and demand all the perks of Chamber membership without paying any of the costs involved?