40,000 Unionized Verizon Workers Walk Off The Job

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After contract negotiations stalled, nearly forty thousand Verizon employees walked off the job today. According to the article, the hardest hit will probably be service in Verizon's Fios Internet, telephone and TV businesses across several east coast states.

Nearly 40,000 Verizon Communications Inc workers walked off the job on Wednesday in one of the largest U.S. strikes in recent years after contract talks hit an impasse. The strike was called by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers that jointly represent employees in such jobs as customer services representatives and network technicians in Verizon's traditional wireline phone operations.
 
Verizon is one of those companies that just doesn't seem to be one that would value those employees enough to care. Union or not. I've worked for companies like that before. Luckily I've found one that doesn't treat me like an expendable asset though. Point being, if I was one of those workers, and my livelihood depended on Verizon, I'm not sure I would have walked. Seems like a bad idea, even if the reasoning behind it is sound.
 
J3RK said:
Verizon is one of those companies that just doesn't seem to be one that would value those employees enough to care. Union or not. I've worked for companies like that before. Luckily I've found one that doesn't treat me like an expendable asset though. Point being, if I was one of those workers, and my livelihood depended on Verizon, I'm not sure I would have walked. Seems like a bad idea, even if the reasoning behind it is sound.
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Companies are now so damned big and the people that make decisions for pay and incentives are so far removed from those positions how can you not have a situation like that?

The concept of unions is great but the reality is shit. Thats as an ex union worker. I remember when i got the job i was excited to be union then i fond that the people that mattered where firmly in the companies pocket and all they really did was protect the lazy shitbags on my team. This was not always the case and at one point in this country i would say unions where absolutely necessary. Now its just shit.
 
Disposed said:
They will. With less pay, less benefits and crappy work conditions...
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That isn't necessarily universally true. Companies tend to pay what the market demands, except where unions or minimum wage laws have skewed that. Benefits are a combination of market demands and government mandates. Except in some very rare circumstances most companies take safety very seriously, especially the big ones like Verizon. The OSHA rules are often stronger than what even most unions demand these days.
 
Until we can get our ridiculously high wages and standard of living in line with India and Africa this labour strife will never end.

They don't need unions and they all have perfectly healthy and normal lives.

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Unions are failing overall. Fair working conditions area thing of the past, abusive hours and temporarily workers living in working poverty are what people are actually wishing for now, even in this thread.
 
I did have Verizon fios, now I have Frontier Fios, which so far has let me down more than a dozen times.
 
schizrade said:
I did have Verizon fios, now I have Frontier Fios, which so far has let me down more than a dozen times.
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I almost accepted a job offer from Alorica to work an outsourced customer service position for Frontier, a company with which I wasn't familiar. I did a little research on Frontier, found out how horrible it was, and swiftly declined the offer to represent (lie and swindle) for it.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Until we can get our ridiculously high wages and standard of living in line with India and Africa this labour strife will never end.

They don't need unions and they all have perfectly healthy and normal lives.

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Union membership should be optional and not compulsory. Whatever good they've done in the past, an argument can be made that they defend modern corruption while riding on the coattails of past achievements made by their founders. The harassment of the non-union film crew from the Robert Rodriguez film From Dusk Till Dawn by the Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees is a case in point, and many of the employees subjected to the union harassment had to reverse their previously favorable impression of unions because of it; see the Full Tilt Boogie documentary that accompanies DVD copies of the film for footage of the protests.
 
If Union organizations weren't so damned corrupt! If ever there was a time people needed a Union that wasn't run by scum bags, it is now. Verizon sucks, glad the employees are trying to get a better work atmosphere. From what I hear, Verizon is a sweat shop.
 
They are trying to get under 50 full time employees so they don't have to pay for health insurance :)
 
Deadly Ramon said:
Union membership should be optional and not compulsory. Whatever good they've done in the past, an argument can be made that they defend modern corruption while riding on the coattails of past achievements made by their founders. The harassment of the non-union film crew from the Robert Rodriguez film From Dusk Till Dawn by the Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees is a case in point, and many of the employees subjected to the union harassment had to reverse their previously favorable impression of unions because of it; see the Full Tilt Boogie documentary that accompanies DVD copies of the film for footage of the protests.
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I don't entirely disagree, but here's the thing. That "compulsory union membership" was a private contract between an employer and it's employees. When the employers decided that there was enough corruption at the government and enough fear at the voter level to get what they were after, they went to their elected officials and bribed them to effectively nullify those private contracts. That's a labour intervention by government on behalf of one party in a legally binding contract to allow them to escape their obligations.

That's not mean ol' unions being mean. Which was actually a conflagration because Bender and Tarantino refused to facilitate a vote. I'd be on the fence about that one, since unions are wildly ineffective for small groups on short jobs at the best of times. The only harassment claim I can find is the directors claiming they were spammed endlessly, and they probably were. Of course, it's a union nothing would surprise me.

No, a government taking lobby/bribe money from a company and turning around to void private, legally binding contracts is open and proud corruption on a state level. That's so much worse than a union, so very much worse than a union.
 
Talking to people today who work for Verizon, they tell me the non-union employees have much better benefits, like bonuses. Odd.
 
Uvaman2 said:
i know! verizon rips you off but gives you some service.. unions just built this country.. lift it out of poverty and abuse, nothing like Verizon incredible coverage.
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"The increase in money wages that labor unions seek is not at all the source of rising real wages and that the source of rising real wages is in fact a rising productivity of labor, which always operates from the side of falling prices, not rising money wages."

Indeed, the efforts of labor unions to raise money wages are profoundly opposed to the goal of raising real wages and the standard of living. When the unions seek to raise the standard of living of their members by means of raising their money wages, their policy inevitably comes down to an attempt to make the labor of their members artificially scarce. That is their only means of raising the wages of their members. The unions do not have much actual power over the demand for labor. But they often achieve considerable power over the supply of labor. And their actual technique for raising wages is to make the supply of labor, at least in the particular industry or occupation that a given union is concerned with, as scarce as possible.

Thus, whenever they can, unions attempt to gain control over entry into the labor market. They seek to impose apprenticeship programs, or to have licensing requirements imposed by the government. Such measures are for the purpose of holding down the supply of labor in the field and thereby enabling those fortunate enough to be admitted to it, to earn higher incomes. Even when the unions do not succeed in directly reducing the supply of labor, the imposition of their above-market wage demands still has the effect of reducing the number of jobs offered in the field and thus the supply of labor in the field that is able to find work.

The artificial wage increases imposed by the labor unions result in unemployment when above-market wages are imposed throughout the economic system. This situation exists when it is possible for unions to be formed easily. If, as in the present-day United States, all that is required is for a majority of workers in an establishment to decide that they wish to be represented by a union, then the wages imposed by the unions will be effective even in the nonunion fields.

Employers in the nonunion fields will feel compelled to offer their workers wages comparable to what the union workers are receiving — indeed, possibly even still higher wages — in order to ensure that they do not unionize.

Widespread wage increases closing large numbers of workers out of numerous occupations put extreme pressure on the wage rates of whatever areas of the economic system may still remain open. These limited areas could absorb the overflow of workers from other lines at low enough wage rates. But minimum-wage laws prevent wage rates in these remaining lines from going low enough to absorb these workers.

From the perspective of most of those lucky enough to keep their jobs, the most serious consequence of the unions is the holding down or outright reduction of the productivity of labor. With few exceptions, the labor unions openly combat the rise in the productivity of labor. They do so virtually as a matter of principle. They oppose the introduction of labor-saving machinery on the grounds that it causes unemployment. They oppose competition among workers. As Henry Hazlitt pointed out, they force employers to tolerate featherbedding practices, such as the classic requirement that firemen, whose function was to shovel coal on steam locomotives, be retained on diesel locomotives. They impose make-work schemes, such as requiring that pipe delivered to construction sites with screw thread already on it, have its ends cut off and new screw thread cut on the site. They impose narrow work classifications, and require that specialists be employed at a day’s pay to perform work that others could easily do — for example, requiring the employment of a plasterer to repair the incidental damage done to a wall by an electrician, which the electrician himself could easily repair.

To anyone who understands the role of the productivity of labor in raising real wages, it should be obvious that the unions’ policy of combating the rise in the productivity of labor renders them in fact a leading enemy of the rise in real wages. However radical this conclusion may seem, however much at odds it is with the prevailing view of the unions as the leading source of the rise in real wages over the last hundred and fifty years or more, the fact is that in combating the rise in the productivity of labor, the unions actively combat the rise in real wages!"
 
Uvaman2 said:
i know! verizon rips you off but gives you some service.. unions just built this country.. lift it out of poverty and abuse, nothing like Verizon incredible coverage.
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Unions have done nothing of the sort for the past 50 years or thereabouts. They are political arms of the Democratic party and nothing more at this point.

Labor laws have made unions practically obsolete otherwise. In the US, there are only 2 areas where a union still makes sense - sports leagues, and ironically, video game development, yet despite the abuses in the game development companies and the LEGIT reasons why a union is needed there, the Teamsters are more focused on more "political" aspirations.

And I feel bad for the low guys on the totem pole in said unions - its like an abused wife syndrome. In my conversations with them, the 2 things that always dominated were just how badly the union has screwed them, and just how pro union they are... and yet seemingly can't put 2+2 together.

Unions had a place in a bygone day, but they've become too corrupted by politics now. The first day I saw them for what they were was as a High School student, watching a teacher complain about how they aren't paid their value, when we all knew he made 80k a year, had a giant house and 3 cars, while the substitute teachers trying to break in but can't due to seniority miss out on badly needed pay because they were forced to be union as well.

Such a bullshit system.
 
Nukester said:
If Union organizations weren't so damned corrupt! If ever there was a time people needed a Union that wasn't run by scum bags, it is now. Verizon sucks, glad the employees are trying to get a better work atmosphere. From what I hear, Verizon is a sweat shop.
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Yeah, despite my union rant, I know the tech industry is shit in terms of how they treat their employees. Its legendary by now.

But to the person who says non-union are getting better benefits - well, that's what the union "negotiated" for them while their teamsters get bank from their political affiliations. The non union is making more due to labor laws. They want to make more? Leave the union, instead of being attached to a soul-sucking Ponzi scheme for politicians.
 
Uvaman2 said:
i know! verizon rips you off but gives you some service.. unions just built this country.. lift it out of poverty and abuse, nothing like Verizon incredible coverage.
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Unions stopped being about 'lifting their workers' in the 60's & 70's when they become shameless political agents as their first priority.
 
Unions are now about making money for unions. So glad I'm out of that shit. I say be like Regan and fire them all.
 
BlueFireIce said:
"The increase in money wages that labor unions seek is not at all the source of rising real wages and that the source of rising real wages is in fact a rising productivity of labor, which always operates from the side of falling prices, not rising money wages."
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George Reisman makes a lot of sense.
 
WangChung said:
As opposed to?
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Wallstreet's free market lap dog school?
to all the posters saying unions are this and the other negative thing, nothing, none of it changes the fact that those that acumulated excess capital or control the means of production have excess power over too many... it is just that simple.
 
like a lot of things unions started out ok but grew too big and now they just drag down businesses.
 
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