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More Than 35,000 AT&T Workers Threaten Weekend Strike (fortune.com)
More than 35,000 AT&T workers plan to go on strike on Friday if they don't reach an agreement with the company for new contracts. From a report: The Communications Workers of America union said about 17,000 workers in AT&T's traditional wireline telephone and Internet business in Nevada and California who have been working without a contract for over a year would walk off the job on Friday afternoon for a three day strike if no deal is reached. On Tuesday, the union made a similar threat for 21,000 workers in AT&T's wireless business spread across 36 states and Washington, D.C. Workers are fed up with delays in the negotiations, Dennis Trainor, vice president of CWA District 1, said. "Now, AT&T is facing the possibility of closed stores for the first time ever," Trainor said. "Our demands are clear and have been for months: fair contract or strike. It's now in AT&T's hands to stand with workers or at 3pm Eastern Time on Friday workers will be off the job and onto picket lines across the country."
>> walk off the job on Friday afternoon for a three day strike
How is this different than hitting the weekend 2 hours early? Is it that managers (non-union) have to fill in shifts over the weekend somewhere or what?
>> AT&T is facing the possibility of closed stores
What stores? Are there still really"retail phone" stores operating somewhere in the USA?
Let's see how you react if you get the same hourly rate after over a decade.
Hell maybe you're just a little overpaid bitch who never truly worked in his life and you have the audacity of looking down on people who earn less than you even though they work more.
For once they will have a reason for not picking up the phone for hours.
AT&T is a pretty terrible corporation. I say let them die, it is long overdue. At least these workers have a union at all! Comcast and Verizon need to come next.
Do you mean it? Every time I've ever had to go into a cell phone store it's been filled with slack-jawed morons wasting oxygen playing with their phones. So yeah, I think civilization might survive.
I'd up my skillset and look for work elsewhere. They are not forced to work for at&t. There are a bunch of non at&t telcos across the US.
If you're only solution is to stop working to force higher pay, have a plan for when you get replaced.
Myself, I will never work for a union shop. I'm not going to throw away money at dues that do not represent my interests or convictions.
Maybe you haven't noticed but we have this recession on. Now if you don't want your hourly wage then that's fine. You're fired and you won't find another job. Have fun earning ZERO. I hear you can build a tent in a shantytown or something. That's what happens to you uppity little bitches who think you're worth something.
Let's see how you react if you get the same hourly rate after over a decade.
Hell maybe you're just a little overpaid bitch who never truly worked in his life and you have the audacity of looking down on people who earn less than you even though they work more.
The rates probably average out after a while. Out of high school I got a job at a Teamster company, and the only job there was to load and unload trailers. I was making $23 dollars an hour and had all medical/dental/pension, etc paid for... All for a job that literally pretty much any able bodied person could do. Sure it was great for me, but when you looked at similar companies almost all had either gone out of business or were bought out because of the unions unwillingness to negotiate.
The companies would open their books and hold meetings, the union knew the situation and could do the calculations themselves, but they wouldn't budge, so instead of wages normalizing tens or even hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs. Then the out of work folks wouldn't take normal jobs due to them being compensated so richly for such non skilled labor, if wages had normalized then they would have been acclimated to accept similar wages, or would still be working as the company most likely would still be in business.
I'd up my skillset and look for work elsewhere.
Skillz don't matter, idiot! There isn't any work for strikers, quitters, uppity assholes, or you! You're finished, fuckface! Your skillz aren't worth shit!
BASIC INCOME NOW!
What recession, dickweed? I'm guessing this is some "alt fact" bullshit you sucked outta some other stupid fuck's asshole?
I need to block this website on my /etc/hosts. Too many people like you who have no concept of economics talking about it like they got a Phd.
Kill yourself, snowflake. Just kill yourself.
EOM
for everyone company that a union bankrupts there are 5 profitable companies that layoff employee's that are "no longer needed" are replace them with foreign workers. i say get the pay while you can.
It still a recession cause I ain't got my coal job and Trump promised Make America Great Again and I ain't got my coal job yet so we in a recession still.
Coal!
It worked for him, speaking in a strictly political sense. It actually cost the taxpayers many, many times more what PATCO was asking for.
Ironically PATCO endorsed Reagan in the 1980 election. PATCO was made up mostly of conservative military veterans, so Reagan's team approached them with a deal: Reagan would support their negotiating position if they'd switch their endorsement from the Democrats to him. Once he was safely elected Reagan reneged on the deal, then fired them when they went on strike.
It was a risky move, but the sheer drama of the move thrilled Reagan's non-union supporters. From a financial viewpoint, it cost billions to replace the fired controllers, not to mention the impact on the rest of the economy of the disruption involved.
As for the powerful blow this dealt for the unions, and if you want to see the impact of that, look at the median household income growth since 1980, which is practically nil when adjusted for inflation.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Found the luddite. Modern coal coalers know that ONLY coal can coal coal, not luddite solar.
COAL!
Nice to see that you're "Practically Perfect in Every Way" and have no needs in life whatsoever.
This isn't about wage; they're trying to (further) cut health benefits to workers who have faithfully
served and who have retired. An agreement is an agreement, to provide those benefits for the
remainder of their life - that was / is the deal. Yeah, Reagan wasn't a good person. I can pretty
much guarantee, in writing, that Reagan benefited from the Actor's Union when he was an actor.
People don't understand how important unions were and should be in the U.S. Child labor laws,
decent working conditions, decent salary would probably NOT exist if it weren't for unions. Wanna
see the free market in a non-union shop? Goto WalMart. Biggest example of corporate welfare bar none.
CAP === ' transmit'
SERENITY NOW!
#DeleteFacebook
I don't see unions destroying companies. I do see companies like a certain auto maker tossing their non-union workers, so they can build plants across the border or overseas.
I guess people don't really care that the unions brought us weekends, vacations, 40 (in theory) hour work week, hazard pay, and may other things we keep for granted.
Good.
Please mod this up.
Funny, I have my copy of Serenity right here, but I don't seem to have my Basic Income.
http://www.history.com/this-da... - This was all pre-union, Ford wasn't unionized until the 1940s.
Other perk included housing and free copies of The Dearborn Independent
For the post-industrial, post-skills, post-knowledge social economy where you're either a perfect cultural fit or you're as good as dead.
though whenever I attempt to get customer service, it feels like their workers are on strike.
For whatever reason many, such as yourself, particularly "conservatives" fail to realized that both unions and companies engage in "collective bargaining." A company is a collection of people providing capital, a union is a collection of people providing labor. Strikes, work halts, layoffs, furloughs etc are all the same arm of different groups (using your market influence). Collective groups exercising their power to get better terms.
If you don't think union's represent the interest's of a labor provider you are ignorant of both the statistical evidence https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2... (there are a multitude of papers detailing the correlation between union power and increased wages) and basic economics http://www.investopedia.com/te...
I've seen family member after family member screwed over by unions. They simply do not care about anything other than greater dues and the methods to increase those dues.
Fortunately, I live in a lovely right to work state where a union can't prevent me from working somewhere if I refuse to join them. I personally have zero pity for any union shop that closes, only for the non union personnel also now out of work because of the union's greed.
Because your anecdotal story has any weight in the face of the statistical evidence quoted directly above.
I'll take experiences of individuals I know over statistics that can be manipulated to shape a desired conclusion any day.
Unions served their purpose decades before I was born, now they are a deer tick poisoning the host it feeds from, while giving nothing positive.
Only the unskilled and weak want unions. If you're better than at least half of your coworkers, unions are only dragging you down. Unions caused the mass offshoring of manufacturing.
Drop unions, fire the dead-weight, then surge ahead in performance.
If you don't like what you're getting paid or your work conditions, change jobs.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Translation: I ignore facts I don't like in favor and try to pretend anecdotal claims are equal or better.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't understand why they ever had any power to start with. If they don't show up to work, fire them. Period.
They have power because they are the actuators of the enterprise.
Take any business, now forbid them from hiring any person to perform any task whatsoever.
Now you understand why they wield power.
The business owner sells a widget for $1000, he gives $200 of that to his employees, leaving $800.
He pays $275 of that $800 to the government in taxes and pockets $525 for himself.
The employees see they are getting $200, and divided between the 100 of them, that's $2/each.
The employees see they are doing 99.9% of the total work for 25.8% of the total pay.
Now you understand why they want to use their power to improve their position.
Mass firing your employees in the Internet age is a recipe for creating the worst competitor you'll ever face.
The people you fire have BOTH a common enemy (you), and a common goal (getting paid more for doing what they did).
Instead of organizing to ask you for better wages, they'll organize to start their own company.
You'll have an idle capital investment, sabotage from disgruntled workers, the fun of trying to hire lots of people below market rates, and plenty of downtime and waste due to new and inexperienced workers.
You should be seeking your copy of Seinfeld instead.
#DeleteFacebook
Fortunately, I live in a lovely right to work state
Indeed. I can see no reason why you should make any more than a Chinese or Indian worker doing exactly the same job.
The problem with arguing based on anecdotal evidence is that anecdotal evidence is not necessarily typical; only statistical evidence can determine how typical something is. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is an informal fallacy.
So....... you openly admit you disregard logical thinking. I hope you admit this admit this fault and voluntarily recuse yourself for doing things that require logic. Like voting :/
A.C. = RAT
Unfortunately, voting has never required logic.
Insite from the inside; most retail sales employees have experienced a net loss in wages by about %50 over the last decade and a half. Now some of this has been due to shifts in the economy and an overall saturation of the marketplace in the wireless industry. For the most part, the sales force acknowledged that wages 15 years ago probably had to suffer some adjustments, and had probably reached a fair equilibrium about 5-7 years ago. Most of the fire/replace crowd have no idea how difficult the job actually is and therefor have no qualifications whatsoever to assess how much that work is worth. The issue has been that At&T has continued to slash wages while being one of the most profitable telco companies on the planet. This potential strike protects workers like my self who consistently rank in the top 10-20 percent of the 40k retail sales employees year over year, but has experienced a 15% decline in the last 3 years, despite union negotiationed yearly cost of living raises. Unions are a necessary evil in the current capitalist climate. Billion-dollar companies will always seek to reduce payouts and frontline employees due to Greed. Oh and by the way, it's functionally impossible to fire/hire and train replacements in any capacity that would result in the same level of production. You can do that at a low skill job like McD but that loss of personnel capital would crush At&t fast. It's far cheaper to just pay fair wages than to attempt something so stupid.