About 40,000 Unionized Verizon Workers Walk Off the Job (reuters.com) 189
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.
No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't affect customer service in any way, it's impossible to do worse.
Re:No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful of what you ask for.
Re: No problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps, but we need more of this. People standing up to large corporate interests who just want to keep cutting jobs, pay, and benefits is a good thing. That so many working people are brainwashed to believe otherwise is a tragedy.
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.
We've all endured more injustices than what started the American Revolution in the first place--those injustices then being both government and corporate just like today (The Boston Tea Party was a revolt against corporate welfare, not against taxes. Go look it up.) Yet we can't even fathom actually doing something about it. This needs to change.
I wish these workers good luck. They're gonna need it with all the corporate media and paid shills everywhere about to be against them.
Re: No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 y
Re: No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unionizing is still a good idea, even if your pay and benefits are good. A union is also a social construct that increases solidarity and loyalty. Both towards each other, but actually towards the company as well. And if/when the company decides to try screwing over the workers again for short term profits, they will have a stronger voice to oppose destructive changes.
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All good things can be taken too far. The example of Hostess Brands [cnn.com] is instructive. When a Union pushes far beyond the optimum point, it provides powerful incentives to increase automation.
Similar effects are starting to be seen in restaurants in response to pushes for a $15.00 minimum wage. Ordering via tablet or kiosk is on the rise, and there are indicators that automated cook-stations are in development. The Momentum Machines automated burger line [neontommy.com] and similar other machines have been out there for ye
Re: No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I like to see how these anti-union / fair pay arguments waffle between the offshoring and automation arguments, which are very different things. Offshoring shifts costs and allows old tech to be used a yesterdays prices. It has a place, but it's a crutch for bad companies and bad managers. Automation is happening either way, eating a shit sandwich today will not prevent it, but it might delay it. Why do you want to delay progress? The quicker people don't need to do
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Yes, Union = Progress!
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My experience in a unionized workplace was... unique. It may have resulted in better pay when the contract was negotiated, but when I came on board 2 years later, there was no potential upside to joining. The CBA was already in place, so there was nothing to be gained on that front. We couldn't strike, so union dues just went to a pool of money that could never benefit us, even in theory. Further, the CBA enforced seniority in layoffs, so when the contract downsized, I was the first to go -- the company
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I know that you've definitely had issues with your unions in the US, they've been just as bad as the employers in a lot of cases. I know the UK has had similar issues.
Obviously, I can only speak from my own perspective of being a union member here in Denmark, where the monthly dues go towards good union work, such as collective bargaining (the company I work for is notoriously tight-fisted), unemployment benefits, legal assistance, job hunting assistance and a bunch of other benefits. Luckily, we're spared
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Nissan's two factories are in the south, and three of Toyota's four US factories is in the Midwest. None of them are unionized.
Meanwhile, Ford is importing the Transit Connect from Turkey and building a brand new factory in Mexico, and GM is starting to import Buicks from China.
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meanwhile, the UAW is still trying to raise cost of doing business for all car companies.
Re: No problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The UAW strikes didn't cause the outflow of employment from Detroit. It was a consequence of NAFTA cheapening the import cost of goods made in Mexico.
Since it's really off topic, I'd prefer not debating the merits and problems of NAFTA here. Yes, union negotiating and poor management did contribute. But the union strikes weren't the single cause of that employment offshoring.
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The average annual percent change, 1987-2014, of productivity of US motor vehicle manufacturing workers is 3.6%. So whichever workers are still left are doing a better job!
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Hmm. Isn't that two sides of the same coin? Mexican imports were cheaper ... partly because the UAW ensured costs were high, even at the expense of the long term health of the industry?
Sure, unions weren't the only factor in what happened to Detroit, but putting the blame squarely on el Mexicans seems rather Trump-like.
Re: No problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Notice the groups mentioned in TFS, including an "Electrical Workers" union.
Verizon can't really "offshore" or "automate" electrical wire installations in houses or businesses, or electrical repairs that need to be tailored to a specific location.
Granted, some of the other striking workers may be in service applications that could theoretically be sent overseas, but as long as the workers who do actual work that is required to be physically located within the U.S. are standing in solidarity with the other workers, Verizon could be a heap of trouble without those folks.
Not every job can be offshored. Skilled trades that deal directly with customers' equipment at a physical location (electricians, plumbers, etc.) are harder to offshore than just about anything else... including management.
Re: No problem (Score:2)
IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Many of the telecom sector employees are Union Members under IBEW. Those that aren't, are usually under CWA. ( Communication Workers of America )
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No but an immigrant from across the border will happily do the job for $7/hr to install cable. It is not a highly skilled job and doesn't even hire a HS diploma. I dated a girl whose exhusband did this with 0 education and made $35/hr to run cable and splice. Not electrical work but easy with only 2 weeks of training.
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It's not a highly skilled job, but it's a highly profitable industry with low labor costs as a percent of expenses, and it makes sense to pay employees commensurate with the profitability of the company, just to prevent the concentration of wealth. The alternative is "redistribution of wealth" through taxation, which nobody really likes, even people who recognize it as necessary, which ironically includes a substantial portion of the people who have accumulated that wealth and a smaller portion of the peop
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Isn't it funny how management never seems to be on the block for offshoring even though there are many fine European CEOs used to working for less than 1/3 the pay of American CEOs.
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Dear Sir:
Our company, Bombay Telephone Polishers, LLC stands ready to provide most excellent service with all needful certifications at very low prices.
In other words, don't be silly. If there's one thing outsourcing companies excel in it's cram-and-barf certs, and even when they don't actually have those certs, they'll claim they do just to score the contract with the corporate bargain-hunters. Then, if there is an actual requirement, they'll ram as many junior persons through cram-and-barf as necessary.
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...that's true. But *every* job can be on-shored. I can hear the refrain now.. "there is a growing shortage of electricians.. we need more [insert visa type] to deal with this shortage!"
There is a growing shortage of supreme court judges...
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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.
If striking gets the message out and people agree with the strikers, then change is possible. The court of public opinion sways a lot of corporate action in America (and elsewhere). For instance, if benefits are part of one's total compensation, then these cuts are compensation cuts.
As a percentage, are all workers receiving the same cut in compensation from the clerk in the stock room to the top executives? Or are these cuts targeting a certain class of worker? If they are not across the board cuts, then
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White flight and bad corporate decisions are what led to Detroit.
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For those who are interested: http://www.npr.org/2015/05/14/... [npr.org]
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The UAW union had (maybe has) plenty of it's own corruption, but it wasn't anywhere near as responsible as the people at the top. However, the people at the top will be glad to see there are still people who buy their narrative.
Why hasn't a strong union crippled UPS?
Unions
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Because you can't offshore the jobs the IBEW members have. It would be comedy gold to watch them try to send a ditch out to be dug or send a pole out to be re-wired though.
The UAW strikes didn't screw Detroit. The big three resting on their laurels and completely failing to see Japan and then Korea as disruptive forces in the auto industry did that, along with NAFTA.
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Very bad comparison. Most folks' tv and 'Net comes from *wired* (or fibre). You can't offshore the jobs that these people do, with the infrastructure *here*, any more than you can offshore desktop support for your CEO.
Wish I could join a union, but they've got the regs written for computer professionals that it's pretty much impossible.
mark
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Verizon has been dragging their feet making FiOS available throughout NYC because they don't want to pay cable installers. Unless you live in a handful of high-end locations Verizon offers only crappy DSL, not FiOS. But "don't worry" they say, it's "coming soon".
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/nyregion/new-york-city-and-verizon-battle-over-fios-service.html [nytimes.com]
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When someone invests their labor and time in something, they deserve to have a say, and it would be dereliction of duty to ignore warning flags that point to mismanagement.
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>>When someone invests their labor and time in something, they deserve to have a say,
Actually, what they deserve to have, is a fair paycheck. If they opt out of a fair paycheck in lieu of a smaller paycheck and more say/control at first and possibly equity further down the line, that works as well. But they don't "deserve" anything other than a fair paycheck. That's how modern society compensates you for "labor and time." In olden times, the compensation would be slivers of silver, or perhaps some gee
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FTFY
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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.
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That used to be pretty much the standard deal in the U.S.. Ask your Dad.
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the root of the problem is that unionized workers are lazy shit bags that work in a business unit that is slowly dwindling away.
source: 2 yrs of having to deal with their bullshit.
I disagree. The problem is not the union workers. It is the whole VZ system.
The reason the business unit is fading away is the upper management has underfunded everything in wireline. I visited one plant where the furniture was from the 70/80s and equally nasty to show for it.
It was amazing frustrating to do *anything* in that
Re: No problem (Score:2)
Not all of them.
Certainly they exist, but can also be said of non-union employees as well. Besides, mgmt will be picking up the slack on the job while the strike continues :D
While folks may be quick to jump to conclusions, I would probably look at what's happened the past one or two contracts before going all judgemental on them.
If their contracts are anything like ours, they got a 1% raise each year for the last five years as well as watching their health care premiums triple over the life of the contract
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Oh come on now. Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line for the next available representative.
Re: No problem (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
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"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.
But here is the catch. Let's say those guys in suits decided to pay you $10/hr? What would happen? More than likely you would quit and the position would be unfilled. That is called supply and demand.
As we found out with illegal immigration and outsourcing the free market will always find a way. If corporations get too abusively all the top talent will work for smaller competitiors leaving the big boys in the dust. If workers demand $35 an hour to lay a cable or run a fiber line then do not be surprised if
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But here is the catch. Let's say those guys in suits decided to pay you $10/hr? What would happen? More than likely you would quit and the position would be unfilled. That is called supply and demand.
Throughout most of history, however, that hasn't been the case. If you didn't want to work for $10/hr, they'd be able to find someone else who did. The Market only works when everyone has equal power to bargain. An individual who's got to feed the family this week has no leverage to speak of when facing a corporatin that can afford to sit on its much larger (capitalized) assets and wait for them to starve.
When you get right down to it, a union is basically just a counter-corporation designed to turn the asy
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If a corporation is a bunch of shareholders pooling their resources to make more money out of a business - then unions are a bunch of small businesses merging to make more money selling their product (labour) in bulk.
And like any other corporation - the labour-selling corporation has a duty and obligation to it's shareholders (who happen to also be the providers of the service it sells to other companies) to maximize profit. That means, for starters, not selling the service for less than it costs to produce
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If a corporation is a bunch of shareholders pooling their resources to make more money out of a business - then unions are a bunch of small businesses merging to make more money selling their product (labour) in bulk.
And like any other corporation - the labour-selling corporation has a duty and obligation to it's shareholders (who happen to also be the providers of the service it sells to other companies) to maximize profit. That means, for starters, not selling the service for less than it costs to produce.
If the price you can earn for a job is less than the cost of living - then that is, by itself, proof of a market failure. It means that the market is no longer willing to pay for the product more than the minimum cost of producing it. When the product is, coincidentally, the only one that the vast majority of people will ever be able to sell - your entire society just got fucked.
No just like the horse and candle industry it will shut down as society will buy other things instead and these other things will get hte extra money from society it used to spend on the product it no longer produces
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Except for the bit where this industry's providers IS the society. If this industry is not profitable ALL industries fail because without this industry being profitable no industry has any customers.
The vast majority of people will never be able to sell anything other than labour. If labour isn't paid well - nobody has money to buy anything else with.
The only way a society can survive without a profitable labour industry is to remove the (utterly arbitrary) idea that a living must be EARNED.
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Ok, for an intellectual excersize SHOULD everyone have the same bargaining power?
Should someone who worked hard to get professional degrees and worked extra hours to get promoted have the same bargaining power as someone did not? Should a very important job that brings in the most market and economical value and most risk be equalled bargained for just any other job?
Corporations do not set the prices for labor. The market does as it is willing to pay more for different services. Admit it if your daughter wa
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Should they not?
The person whose name you have usurped didn't work hard to get a professional degree - he's a dropout.
Working extra hours? Lots of people do that. At Burger King.
One of the things that annoys people more than anything else about the C-gang is that you can be paid vastly more to be an utter failure than most hard-working degreed people will make in a lifetime. Any risk there is on the part of the employers, not the employee, who wins either way.
The Holy Market doesn't always do as it is "will
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I dated a girl who used to be in a union before leaving. Shoot They get paid $35/hr and only require a HS diploma! They travel all over the US to install fiber which is an easy job that anyone immigrant can do for $10/hr happily.
How is that fair for those who went to college and get paid less, and for the shareholders, customers, and tax payers?
Not to sound like an ass but, it sounds like artificially inflated bump. If Verizon can get third party workers to come in for 50% less than what is the problem? Obv
Re: No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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What makes you think I haven't done either? Or, for that matter, done the actual incorporation, rather than taking over after the company was already running?
I gave it up. I can make good business decisions. What I can't endure doing is all the constant dealing with people to establish and maintain business relationships. I'd rather be doing just about anything else including taking a potato peeler to my eyeballs.
On the other hand, few CEOs can design and build their own products. So are people skills cosmi
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This is where we need to think about whose interests
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I have a tough time feeling sorry for someone without the mental capacity or drive to get a GED and then demands to live like the 1%.
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FIOS (Score:2)
Couldn't affect customer service in any way, it's impossible to do worse.
FIOS around NYC provided one of the most reliable residential internet services I ever used, and I've only seen them send good technicians and linemen. I've seen cable service that just kicks out randomly for half an hour like crappy DSL, but the FIOS worked when semis knocked it down and ran over it.
kinda like when the government shuts down (Score:2)
It's time to rise up a be counted (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a power struggle between union and management, and although I think a fair deal can be reached, the management clearly needs to be sent a signal.
We simply don't care any more about increasing share holder value at the expense of jobs.
Re:It's time to rise up a be counted (Score:5, Funny)
I think a fair deal can be reached, the management clearly needs to be sent a signal.
Can you fear me now?
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Except there's definitely a concerted effort to convince the non-union people that the union people have it too good and that they need to be taken down a few levels. So instead of the non-union employees fighting for better pay and benefits to match the unions, they instead fight to take pay and benefits away from the unions and drag everyone down.
The joke I've heard is:
There's a CEO, a union guy, and a non-union guy standing around a table with a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, stuffs th
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Secondly, that rule is in place to discourage hiring of non-union workers; didn't you realize that?
You can vote with your wallet here. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: You can vote with your wallet here. (Score:2)
Verizon has racked in about 1.8 Billion in profit each month for the first quarter. Verizon's own estimates state that is currently costing them about a Billion per year on employee compensation, or a little more than 2 weeks of business. I think they can afford not to gut every single part of the benefit package. Oh and they recently got 10.8 Billion for selling off 3 States that was effective 4/1/16, so they have some cash lying around
Re:You can misinterpret statistical data here (Score:5, Informative)
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%.
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Unless cellular 5G can replace wired internet and be effectively "unlimited", there is still a place for a wired infras
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It is always a balancing act (Score:2)
Commenting and fingerpointing to the actual profit is simply pointless.
Mr, Wernst, $12B is a lot of money, but this number is only relevant to the shareholders. Without making further analysis, I am making a guess that US based pension plans are among the largest shareholders. Basically it is the retired teachers, policemen, firemen, municipal workers... the average US retired person.
If you cut the profit in half for Verzion, you are immediately making a massive change to the pension plans, to the accountin
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Good for them. Techies take note! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Hyper goes with Ultra (Score:2, Informative)
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 tod
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Bingo. But don't forget that IT is pretty divided, and it's why a lot of arguments on slashdot start over these things...
On one hand you have software engineers: while tough, and require a fair amount of time investment to keep up to date, etc, is incredibly rewarding, and usually you can keep a decent work/life balance, make 200k+/year once you're good, etc.
Then you have coders, tech grunts, support, game developers, etc. Those are usually underpaid, under appreciated, taken advantage of, etc.
A lot of peop
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White-collar work and unions don't mix. A union is a mechanism by which one may put more bullshit between himself and getting the job done and is
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several years ago there was a massive nationwide strike against ATT, before the breakup.
I believe it was the CWA. my grandfather was a part of it.
among other things, ATT were trying to get out of their previously agreed upon pension plans.
the end result of the strike was that the pension not only stayed, in perpetuity through any and all buyouts (which was good forward thinking on the CWA's part), but was also expanded to include full medical for both the employee and spouse.
my grandfather worked as a linem
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How am I able to do this? I pick employers that respect work life balance. When I interview for a new job I ask them what their work life is like, if they say that they do a lot
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If IT and software development were unionized, or better, entry was controlled by a professional organization, people would have a better quality of life.
I think you're doing it wrong if that is your experience. My company treats developers like kings. Free snacks, unlimited vacation, $5k in training every year, a week of paid leave to volunteer at a charity of your choice.
Unions seem like a good idea for unskilled or commodity labor that cannot command reasonable compensation as an individual, but in high-skill positions collective bargaining only hurts the good developers. I know I wouldn't be happy making the same thing as everyone around me if I th
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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.
ummm you seem to be missing the fact that this is the desired outcome of obamacare.
Re: Good for them. Techies take note! (Score:2)
"I think the companies should really just negotiate on a dollar figure for compensation, and let the union figure out how to manage health benefits and pensions. No long-term unknown costs and the union is motivated to seek the best solution for it's members because they will have a much more direct influence by voting on different plans than on union officers negotiating plans with the company."
The bad thing is, while the Union might like to pretend they care about their members, they truly only give a dam
Wait.. who do we cheer for ? (Score:2)
Slashdot pretty much hates unions so we should cheer the company.
But slashdot pretty much hates Verizon and loves to see them get hurt so we should cheer the union...
This is worse than that time there was a supreme court case where the plaintif and the defendent were BOTH corporations and the judges couldn't figure out who should win because whoever won a corporation lost !
Tell me... (Score:4, Funny)
How would one ionize a Verizon Employee in the first place?
Not in CA (Score:2)
Verizon sold all of its fiber (& customers) to Frontier. Two other states as well.
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No love, absolutely none, will be lost between labour and management
There is no love, absolutely none, for Verizon management amongst absolutely anyone, anywhere. Bigger sacks of shit do not exist on planet earth, including those found in fertilizer bags, these people if ground up and distributed could put honest, hungry cows out of business. If the employees want gold plated toilets, let them have them.
s/Verizon/Any Telecom/g
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Re:No More Clintons, ty (Score:5, Informative)
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/... [politico.com]
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It would really make my decade if CEOs calling out Sanders ends up waking up the Dem's rank and file to how much better he'd be for their interests than another Clinton presidency.
They are awake. Unfotuantely, you have the democratic party's "super-delegates" to cancel that out.
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unfort hill still is getting the majority of votes, showing where the rank and file are.
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unfort hill still is getting the majority of votes, showing where the rank and file are.
There was a two and a half year cliff. (Score:3)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/... [weeklystandard.com]
There was a two and a half year cliff. We are just on our way into that now. Yes, this does mean a reduction in so-called "Cadillac Plans", orwise known as "Good health insurance.
In addition, in states like New York and California, which set up exchanges, have their own sunset coming on the federal subsidy; this was the big argument between Red States, like Alabama, who refused to set up exchanges of their own, and the federal government last year when those sunsets starte
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This is off-topic, but if you're really paying $56 a month for a 2 GB plan you're paying way the hell too much. You can get a Straight Talk 5 GB 4G LTE "unlimited" plan for just $45 a month in the US, with your choice of carrier SIM cards.
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3x as fast
Really? [tomsguide.com]
Yes, really (Score:2)
What that bar (which is pretty darn close between T-Mobile and Verizon) does not show is the difference in speed form region to region... there are absolutely areas around the country where T-Mobile is much much faster than Verizon. At my home I couldn't get calls in the basement of my home with Verizon, but I can with T-Mobile...