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Hundreds of AT&T Wireless Workers and Supporters Plan To Protest at iPhone 8 Launch at Apple HQ
Hundreds of AT&T wireless workers and members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) will protest outside the launch of the iPhone 8 at Apple HQ on Tuesday, we were told. "Marking the start of a critical sales period that's expected to bring in billions for the telecom giant, workers are calling out AT&T's pay cuts for its retail employees and the company's rampant outsourcing and offshoring that undermine their job security and ability to provide quality customer service," the Communications Workers of America said in a press statement. Over the years, AT&T has increasingly handed over the operations of its retail operations to third-party dealers that now represent over 60 percent of all AT&T branded stores. On top of this, AT&T retail employees allege that they are seeing their pay decline by thousands of dollars because the company manipulates their commission structure.
You can get an AT&T phone cheaper at virtually every store other than a AT&T retail store. Best Buy, Target, Costco all have sales. AT&T wants you to have Direct TV for virtually any promotion at a AT&T retail store.
Is the MOST EXPENSIVE way to do it. Oh, but I only pay x per month...Yeah, and over that time, you pay MORE for the phone if you paid in full. A lot of consumers, still think that you have to buy your phone from a carrier store. Walk into one and you'd think you walked into an Apple store, with a bit of Samsung also. They PUSH the apple phone because apparently that make more profit on it, and I'll be Apple gives them a deal on the phone.
Marking the start of a critical sales period that's expected to bring in billions for the telecom giant, workers are calling out AT&T's pay cuts for its retail employees and the company's rampant outsourcing and offshoring that undermine their job security and ability to provide quality customer service,
They do know who they're working for, right? AT&T is worse than Comcast when it comes to customer service.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
So, AT&T employees are protesting AT&T's business practices. Nothing they're protesting has anything to do with the iPhone 8 or Apple at large. Nonetheless, they're protesting at the launch of the new iPhone, simply because they know that places like Slashdot can't resist posting clickbait articles that mention Apple in the headline, thus bringing attention to their cause, despite the fact that nothing they're doing has anything to do with Apple.
Even worse, it looks like Slashdot is "breaking" this news, since I don't see a link or article mentioned anywhere, so that means that Slashdot is solely responsible for authoring the headline. Shame on you.
Thus completing the circle of self-interested hypocrisy.
The CWA wants the AT&T from a previous era back, and in some respects I would be behind that too. Companies' power to offshore, outsource and basically get rid of any group that isn't 100% profit-generating is a lot of what contributes to middle class instability.
I'm barely old enough to remember when "old" AT&T and the RBOCs existed...I was 10 when they were ordered de-monopolized. But from what I've heard from people alive previously, getting a job with one of these companies was a guaranteed ticket to lifetime stability. In addition, engineering was actually done correctly because there wasn't constant pressure to squeeze every single cost out of the system. I know everyone's going to say monopolies are bad, but they do provide the most stable class of jobs. Maybe monopolies are bad, but the alternative of a ton of cut-throat competitors isn't good for society either. In the model we have, public companies (and private ones controlled by hedge funds) are forced to implement whatever cost-saving trick is in vogue every quarter to make the numbers. A lot of these tricks, like spinning off "expensive" employees into a separate company to reduce benefits, offshoring to a service provider to hide expenses on a different balance sheet line, or constantly squeezing workers to get the tiniest drop of productivity out of them are detrimental to employment in general. Verizon did similar things as well, when they spun out Verizon Wireless. VZW workers get way fewer benefits than the CWA workers in Verizon proper.
I just wish people would get it out of their heads that unions are bad. Especially in the face of automation and offshoring, they're basically the only chance an employee has against their employer. Employers have spent decades convincing employees that they have their best interests in mind and that we're all friends. I think there needs to be a more adversarial labor/management relationship put back into the mix to swing the pendulum back toward the middle more. There's a big difference between "we can't fire you for any reason" demands and standing up when management says "we're moving 20,000 engineering positions to India effective immediately so that I can buy another mansion, and by the way we're still friends, right?"
"If a company like AT&T treats you poorly then QUIT! Go work for another company that pays you better and treats you well!"
People love to say this whenever workers try to claw back some power. The honest truth is that all employers treat people poorly to some degree. And they love it when more people say that anyone who complains about it should quit, because it just makes their job easier. Compared to today, the 50s and 60s were a golden age of employment because there was a balance in the employer/employee relationship, things were stable, and employers grudgingly agreed to allow workers to follow a career path.
Without some universal check on employers' power, employers will just cut and squeeze until there's nothing left to squeeze. They'd love to see everyone working for minimum wage...no wait, let's get rid of the minimum wage...no wait, let's just hire everyone as an independent contractor and offshore everything that can be offshored to TCS or Wipro or Accenture. That universal check would be a union or trade organization. Otherwise, if you try to be the nice employer and offer a few concessions, the other employers will just get more evil in response and drive you out of business.
Explain to me how this would be any more justified or sensible if we replaced the words "retail employees" with:
- telephone switchboard operators
- ISDN engineers
- elevator operators
- horse and buggy whip factory workers
?
Industries change, and labor changes with it. And each side gets as much as they can bargain for. What more do you want?
The iPhone 8 is responsible for this, how...?
It would help Trump politically to show up at this rally. The offshoring issue is a "pro-worker" issue that is less divisive than his usual activities. Sure, it ticks off the plutocrats, but they don't vote. Note in general I am NOT a Trump supporter, but believe focusing on "working-class" issues instead of ethnicity and gender would give him more traction.
Table-ized A.I.
I have yet to see a single company change their employee policy for the better [1] because people have quit. If it is changed, it is because of a news media item, the government stepping in, competitor forcing them to change, of the company's ownership changed hands.
[1]: I've seen changes for the worse, where one policy was that if an employee was looking at glassdoor on a company network, it would be grounds for insta-firing, but not really for the better.
real trade unions such as CWA do some real good.
Bullshit. They skim workers' paychecks to buy hookers and blow for mobsters and politicians.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
in the 50s and 60s, an entry level job, paying minimum wage or close to it, fresh out of high school, was also enough to marry your high school sweetheart (who does not work), have a couple kids, and buy a sweet 3 bedroom with a white picket fence and have more than enough left over to save for retirement, take family vacations, etc, etc..etc..etc..
Yes, and why do you think that doesn't work today? Do you think it's a coincidence that wages are not keeping pace with inflation and such? No, it's the exact thing ErichTheRed is talking about, just compounded over several decades.
He has little insight or even concern about appealing to a broader variety of voters. Election turnout is so low, coupled with our election system (gerrymandered districts and the electoral college), that relatively small groups of extremists can swing an election. The few issues he does take a genuine personal interest in are almost invariably opposed to the interests of workers. I don't doubt the propaganda machine will continue to fool tons of them, but I do hope that as the failures continue to be writ large, turnout will increase, meaning a better ratio of reasonable people to extremists at the polls.
Slavoj Zizek refers to this as "the illusion of freedom". You're free to be assfucked by whoever you want! If you are able to get a college education, haven't got swept up in the police state, and win the job lottery, maybe they'll even use lube.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Okay, I'll explain the fallacy of your own dead horse for you: right now, the buggy whip manufacturer (AT&T) is enjoying historical profits while at the same time demanding the people who generates said profits work for less money.
About 10 years ago, I worked at an AT&T store and made over $60,000 per year. It was a good job, and if you could show people the benefit of a wireless phone, it was easy money. As time passed, market penetration increased rapidly. It became more difficult to sell phones to "new customers". It became more common to see kids at 10, 9, 8, or 5 years old already have a phone. Fast forward, and it wasn't too long before nearly everyone had a cellphone with a data plan.
Back then, AT&T needed a strong sales force to penetrate the market. They needed to sell cell phones and data plans to customers that had not yet owned one. As market penetration approached 100% all that AT&T (and other carriers) were doing to changing out somebody's data phone for another data phone. It became rare to sell a phone to a "new customer" and it became rare to sell a data plan to a former dump-phone user because they didn't exist anymore. As the market reached saturation, sales commission levels dropped correspondingly. Now that everyone already has a phone with data, the carriers don't need or want corporate stores.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Witness BitZtream getting pwned!... twice.....three times!