Quote:
Originally Posted by Vegas Joe
When I heard this morning that thousands of Verizon employees went on strike, my first thought was that they must be insane. Who with any sanity would dare go on strike in this economy? I thought, with 9% unemployment and people begging for even part time jobs, to do such a thing would be just absolutely crazy. But then I heard that the company was actually trying to do pretty draconian things to the work force including making them pay $3000 a year in premiums and deductibles for insurance that they now get for free. While free medical and dental is probably pretty liberal and few people get it free, a $3000 deductible is pretty draconian. And the company also wants give backs of 2 holidays a year, give ups of job security and pay raises tied only to a supervisor's review, elimination of the pension plan and other stuff. While this stuff might be understandable for a company in trouble such as GM or Delta Airlines were last year, I fail to see any logic in a company that made $3 billion in profit last year making such demands from its workers. Some of the things the company wants are reasonable but most of this is quite unreasonable. It is like they want to take advantage of the bad economy to try to break the union. I don't know where people come down on this but when you see these guys working in manholes and on poles in all kinds of bad weather doing what appears to be a fairly dangerous job, I just sort of feel that their pay is well earned. It is not a job I would want to do.
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I have a good friend that works for Verizon. It's actually a pretty easy job. They get 2 hours to complete each job, for what he does, even if he finishes in 10 minutes. He then hangs out for the next hour and fifty minutes. Paying 3k/yr for health benefits is what the private sector average is. That is chump change. Also, what you listed is what is being brought to the bargaining table, both sides always shoot high then they make a deal somewhere in the middle.
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