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Sure landlines have dropped...so have employee numbers.10 years ago my shop had 75 techs.Now we have maybe 25.GTE/VZ has always controlled employee numbers through attrition,by retiring 10 a year and maybe hiring 2 in 5 years.The reason you have to wait up to 2 weeks for a service call is because we dont have the manpower.
You got the same with AT&T. I had an ongoing problem with my landline (wire from house to pole so it was their problem). Eventually a district manager came to the house and we got to talking.
Can't say that I blame the workers although I was frustrated.
Lack of manpower is happening all over.
And it seems even with service folks (painters, electricians, etc) there's no more "girl in the office" to take your call..it's all answering machine and the owner/manager calls you back hours later.
a statement from president ed hill from the ibew.org website:
Northeast verizon workers strike
company refuses to move off extreme demands and negotiate in good faith
in the face of continued demands by verizon for contract concessions that would take much of its unionized workforce back to 1960s levels of wages, benefits and working conditions, members of the international brotherhood of electrical workers and the communications workers of america tonight went on strike.
Six weeks of negotiations between the ibew, cwa and verizon produced no progress as the contract covering 45,000 workers from massachusetts to virginia expired at the stroke of midnight.
“if verizon had shown any good faith effort to negotiate honestly, our members would still be on the job,” said ibew international president edwin d. Hill. “instead, they turned their backs on any attempts to reach a reasonable settlement. We cannot stand by while one of the richest, most successful corporations in the world joins the race to decimate the middle class of this country. We remain ready to meet with verizon to work out a fair agreement, but at this point, we had no choice.”
verizon has revenues of $100 billion and net profits of $6 billion. Verizon wireless just paid its parent company and vodaphone a $10 billion dividend.verizon chairman ivan seidenberg is paid 300 times what an average worker earns, and other top executives have been paid lucrative compensation packages.
The ibew represents 12,800 workers at verizon primarily in massachusetts, rhode island and new jersey, with smaller units in pennsylvania and upstate new york.
Below is a statement off the cwa local 1103 website:
The current round of negotiations with verizon has been unprecedented,
both in terms of the scope of verizon’s attacks on the middle-class jobs
of our members, and in terms of the company’s absolute refusal to engage
in serious collective bargaining towards a new contract.
There has been absolutely no movement by the company at the table since
talks began on june 22nd. Over 100 concessionary company proposals
remain on the table. We have never seen anything like this in 50 years
of bargaining with verizon and its corporate predecessors.
As a result, cwa and ibew have decided to take the unprecedented step
of striking to force management to stop its wisconsin-style tactics, and
to start bargaining in good faith.
45,000 cwa and ibew members walked off the job at midnight to demand
that a company which made $19.5 billion and paid its top executives $258
million over the last four years start bargaining in good faith and stop
its attack on middle class jobs.
If and when the company agrees to bargain, then we will return to work and bargain until a fair agreement is reached.
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.
If I were one of the Verizon employees and had a chance to switch to an HSA qualified plan with a $3000 deductible and no other out of pocket responsibilities I'd take it in a second over what they probably have now which is probably an unlimited co-pay plan, a lower deductible like a $500 per person deductible and then 20% until they have another few thousand out of pocket.
I'd take it because handling a "draconian" $3000 deductible is pretty measly out of pocket responsibility if that is the STOP-LOSS point and if the insurance company is on the hook for everything over that.
Think about it. What if you had to be on 10 expensive Rx drugs each with a $50 co-pay? What good would your low deductible plan be to you if you had to shell out $500 in co-pays for one person every month x12= $6000 every year??????????????? What if a second person in the family get's sick and needs prescriptions????????????????????????????????????? ???????
The low deductible plans with co-pays are horrible rotten plans and they offer little if any protection if you get really sick.... in addition to them being more expensive to start with for much more total out of pocket costs.
People and Employers need to WAKE UP and learn how to evaluate a health plan. The only decent health insurance plans are the ones with STOP-LOSS protection for EVERYTHING. If prescription drug coverage is separate YOU DON'T WANT THAT PLAN!
Also, 9 times out of ten, you will save as much if not MORE than the amount of the deductible by switching from the lousy co-pay plan to the quality high deductible with the """""draconian"""" $3000 deductible.
Boo Hoo. <<sarcasm>> The "draconian plan saves so much in premiums there is enough to cover your full deductible. So the "draconian plan" wouldn't cost you a penny. Isn't that horrible. You'd get better protection and the savings is enough to cover your entire deductible. You'd spend less and have 100% of your expenses covered EVEN IF you had to pay out the full deductible paid for by the savings. If you didn't have $3000 of expensive you'd have $$ left over to use the following year. That doesn't count tax savings that you'd also be eligible for
Pretty soon the union will be wiped out at Verizon.................
Thats cool but while we're here we will fight.......Im not some big union guy but I work for the company so I know what the average outsider sees as lazy spoiled workers is BS.Outside Plant is a hard,hot and dangerous job.
The telephone box in front of my west Texas farm house was destroyed by road maintenance people when I moved in two years ago and is still a pile of rubble to this day. I haven't had a landline telephone in ten years. I don't even have a landline telephone in my Albuquerque city home.
I wish you well but today world stock markets are crashing all around us, nearly 1 out of ten Americans are unemployed and many economists say we are headed for a double dip recession. You guys and gals might just consider hijacking one of Verizon's Gulfstream G400s, asking for a ransom and jumping out over a heavily wooded area during a blinding ice storm.
The irony here is Germany has twice the percentage of unionized workers as the United States but German corporations REFUSE to outsource key manufacturing technologlies and jobs? Why German corporations, unions and government WORK TOGETHER to form economic policy that works IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF COUNTRY.
There is no such things as "American Economic Policy". Corporations work in their own self interest not overall interests of the country. The entire premise that unions "drove" American corporations out of the United States is bullsh*t. American corporations left the United States purely based on the ABILITY TO MAKE MORE PROFITS in low wage markets that are expanding faster than the United States.
Good points.
Off-shoring is a trend or a "fashion" statement. Wall Street loves outsourcing , thus you end up with outsourced jobs that cost the same as domestic US manufacturing (the cheap Chinese labor is sometimes offset by costly shipping fees and high initial investments in Asia. Even in such scenarios, the investing community favors China).
People also forget that unionized work (which "pushes companies to outsource") is not dominant in US. For the 45K striking Verizon union workers, they have 150K non-unionized employees.
Germany does not outsource that much (they do to some extend) because of their culture and tradition. Off-shoring is more cultural then economic.
The bottom line is that everything we make here in the US, can be made with cheaper labor elsewhere. (There will always be someone in Asia, perhaps Africa that is willing to work for a bawl of rice). Should we pull the shutters over America's economy?
P.S. Surprisingly, top management of outsourcing companies still remain American and reside in NYC or California. Why not outsource top 5 Verizon executive jobs ($254M) to China or India? I am confident that some (skilled managers) are willing to work for much less (and live well). What about that?
Big corporations are testing us to see how much they can get away with. I support those who strike. I think if somebody wants more from their company, they should fight for it. Cowering in fear is not what made the American worker productive.
In a related incident, I know of a recent event at a meeting at a large newspaper company. On the same day it announced layoffs and mandatory furloughs for employees, two of the executives got a total of $14.5 million in bonuses. When asked at that meeting by a fearless employee if that was fair or even sane, the recipient of the bonus said "It was in our contract". When another fearless employee pressed the issue, the recipient tabled the discussion and the meeting was adjourned.
Insert expletives here. Then get out the torches and start marching...
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