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Comments on news posted 2009-08-20 14:00:57: Back during Verizon's second quarter earnings call, the company announced they'd be laying off 8,000 employees this year in order to generate some savings. ..
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 tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
| Where does the $AVINGS GO?!?!? If that savings doesn't get passed along to the consumer in terms of LOWER PRICING for it's core FIOS products: BROADBAND, PHONE SERVICE AND TV SERVICE (primarily in that order).. then screw Verizon.. I hope they ultimately have to go bankrupt a-la MCI Worldcom and some executive white collar flunkies go down for the count via criminal charges!
WE the consumers DEMAND accountability for breaking the MONOPOLY/DUOPOLY cycle that exists today in 100% of Verizon's markets/footprint! | |
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tim_k
Buttons, Bows, Beamer, Shadow, Kasey
Premium
join:2002-02-02
Stewartstown, PA
 ·Millenicom
 ·WildBlue
| my view I haven't seen the break down of the 8,000 figure. We were told that 2,694 positions in the mid atlantic/potomac region will be lost. Lost doesn't mean layoffs. Buy outs have been offered, but I don't know how many took them. Once retirements and buy outs have ben counted, then those hired after 2003 can be layed off. For those who are happy to see union jobs lost, don't complain when it takes longer for you to get service. Around here, over the past few years we've lost so many people that on most days if one person takes off, they have to cover it with OT. The other day they had no one to cover a particular job for several hours. I see service related things going downhill all the time because of the lack of people. Verizon should expect a fall in earnings with all the money thrown at FIOS. Once the build out is complete, then earnings should skyrocket. Just the typical upper managment policy of looking at the short term stock price instead of the long term.
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RIP my babys Buttons 1/15/94-2/9/07 & Beamer 7/24/08, Buttons, Buttons video, Beamer
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FastiBook
join:2003-01-08
Newtown, PA | Bad idea. In emergencies, mass outages, and other issues, you want as many tech as you can afford. I really don't want to wait 4 days to get my phone back working if lightning fries my ONT....
- A
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LETS GO METS! | |
| | | kmb40
join:2004-08-02
Fort Washington, MD
| Re: WHY? I think some folks feel that they will one day be as large and or successful as the corps so they side with the same line of thinking.
Fact is everyone cant be that large in a capitalistic system. Little people that fight each other and support the folk at the top are a key element in capitalism. | |
| richmas5
join:2009-09-19
Totowa, NJ
| layoffs the thing is unions protect workers for certain things,such as your employer says one day ,your fired because I dont like your face,their has to be justification,with layoffs the unions can't do much,a company can say we do not need these many employees,but they have to layoff in reverse seniority,the writing was on the wall with the fiber,less problems ,less employees,rural areas where they weren't going to see profit sell them off ,cherry pick what areas get fios,the government is partially to blame,because they knew that it would eliminate jobs and they rolled out the red carpet | |
| Shift
join:2009-10-29
| Layoffs Clearing things up a little more
I am a tech in the Mid-Atlantic region so I cant speak for how things are done in other parts of the country but here's what I can tell you about the DC area.
These layoffs have been a long time coming ever since they first started hiring every warm body off the street they could when Fios first started rolling out. It takes an army to build a network but not maintain it. I feel bad for anyone who looses their job but many of these techs should have been a bit smarter. Rather than going out and buying Corvettes and Hummers they should have seen the writing on the wall and prepared a little better. I think many jobs would be safe for longer if the Fios techs weren't blatantly screwing Verizon. Millions of dollars have been paid to techs sitting in the office for 2 hours in the morning just to all meet at dunkin donuts for another hour then sitting around the shop for hours at the end of the day all while on overtime. The techs have too much freedom and they abused the hell out of it and it should have been stopped in the beginning. Sure they have GPS to monitor techs on SOME trucks, not all and many groups stopped paying for the service while other groups dont even use it. Verizon spent a fortune on the GPS just to have it fizzle out with management within a year who just stopped using it. But thats normal with Verizon management. There is a plethora of Managers who can only justify having a job (an extremely high paying one at that) by coming up with more crazy "fads". Every few months something new gets rolled out that costs the company millions then its just forgotten shortly after. They could spend a small amount of that money on human beings and get more done than trying to automate everything with million dollar fads.
A few things mentioned earlier I wanted to touch on was...
Our liberal sick time?? Not hardly, we get 2 consecutive days every six months anything more must be approved by FMLA and that is not an easy task. If its not approved your put on a 4 step program. Step 1 is a slap on the wrist, step 2 is a couple days off w/o pay and no voluntary overtime, step 3 is something like a week off and 0 overtime, step 4 is termination.
We do have really good health care, vision, dental and 401k all of which has been won for us by the union and is a major reason why Verizon used to be a great company to work for. Why shouldn't we have these things (directed to you blue collar bashers). Most of us do work very hard and put up with alot of crap that runs down from management apart from a few lazy techs.
Unfortunately the CWA is not as strong as they once were. For the most part the CWA has changed from a union to just another greedy corporation. I'm still astounded by the actions I've seen over the last few years from them. And any tech hired after Aug 2003 can be laid off as they are not protected under the no lay off clause but contractors, temp and term employees must be gotten rid of first.
As far as quickly replacing a few hundred thousand union workers.. IMPOSSIBLE. Some of you seem to think that Verizon is made up entirely of grunts connecting a pair of wires on a pole. That is surely not the case. Out of the hundreds of thousands of union employees only a small portion of that is tool wielding grunts. Any monkey can be taught to use a screwdriver so as far as replacing a residential copper installer no problem. Replacing Fios techs a couple months of training to someone who's not technical.. cable splicers easy.. But get into a few other sides of the company like the business office, test centers, special services, switching, construction, ppm etc. Some of which could be fairly easily trained but finding enough qualified people to take over the world of data would be impossible. 1 in 1,000 might be partially qualified, 1 in 10,000 would be reasonably qualified, 1 in a 100,000 would be a good candidate. Maintaining what Verizon maintains is extremely different from every other non LEC technical company, what we do cant be done by IT type people. This world is very different. | |
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