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jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

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Re: I understand why

CON (for AT&T)
The technicians that maintain the lines are often in unions.

DataRiker
Premium Member
join:2002-05-19
00000

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DataRiker

Premium Member

Unions have nothing to do with ATT's problem. They are a highly profitable company.

Perhaps if the company was losing money due to labor I could understand. But its not...
silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA

silbaco

Premium Member

said by DataRiker:

Unions have nothing to do with ATT's problem. They are a highly profitable company.

Perhaps if the company was losing money due to labor I could understand. But its not...

That high profitability is coming from their union-free wireless, not their wireline.

CaptainRR
Premium Member
join:2006-04-21
Blue Rock, OH

CaptainRR

Premium Member

There wireless is not totally union free. You might be thinking about Verizon wireless is non union.
TBBroadband
join:2012-10-26
Fremont, OH

TBBroadband

Member

Much of AT&T Mobility is union free. Very little is union.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

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"Unions have nothing to do with ATT's problem"

You must not have to work with them on a daily basis.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

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tshirt to DataRiker

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to DataRiker
I agree, all to often, the orgainized labor is the target for the blame when years of old school management and/or regulatory "overburden"* are more likely the cause.

*layer after layer of patchwork rules that no longer serve any current purpose or even conflict with current best practice.
unraveling the tangle is a difficult process.
Rakeesh
join:2011-10-30
Phoenix, AZ

Rakeesh to jmn1207

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said by jmn1207:

The technicians that maintain the lines are often in unions.

I wish I could understand for the life of me why anybody has any sympathy for the mafia.

attrsc
@mycingular.net

attrsc to TBBroadband

Anon

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Actually over 60% of att wireless employees pay union dues

JakCrow
join:2001-12-06
Palo Alto, CA

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That was amazingly lame.
JakCrow

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How can unions be a problem for at&t when the CWA has been a mouthpiece for the telcos while throwing their members under the bus for years now?

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop

Member

The problem is with AT&T and the CWA.

JakCrow
join:2001-12-06
Palo Alto, CA

JakCrow

Member

I can agree with that. I've worked with both. Never again. CWA is a poor excuse for a union. My mom was a nurse and belonged to a union which stood up for its members. The same can't be said for CWA.
WhatNow
Premium Member
join:2009-05-06
Charlotte, NC

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The outside wireless techs doing the exact same job may be union in one state and management in the state next to it.
WhatNow

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Craft keeps management from looking even worse then it does.

cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL

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said by tshirt:

I agree, all to often, the orgainized labor is the target for the blame when years of old school management and/or regulatory "overburden"* are more likely the cause.

*layer after layer of patchwork rules that no longer serve any current purpose or even conflict with current best practice.
unraveling the tangle is a difficult process.

I will, rather exceptionally, agree with you. The problem is though that in the current anti regulatory environment there is no way to establish a set of new, meaningful rules and regulations, so we are stuck with antiquated , watered down, teeth less and increasingly nonsensical regulation. Which creates a demand for further regulatory break down- as we can see in the article.

ITALIAN926
join:2003-08-16

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Holy cow, I agree with you for the first time, EVER.
ITALIAN926

ITALIAN926 to JakCrow

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You really have no idea what youre talking about.
ITALIAN926

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quote:
CON (for AT&T)
The technicians that maintain the lines are often in unions.
and thats a CON? , if it wasnt for their Union, they would be doing crap work like most of the local incumbent cable companies, getting paid by the job.
AT&T and Verizon halted Uverse and FiOS due to NOTHING BUT CORPORATE GREED, to essentially rape people with their wireless products. If you snapped your fingers and removed the union, it would not change their plans one bit.

Sick and tired of the anti-union bullshit as if these workers are rich. MOST are hard working people that dedicate 25-40 years of their lives for those corporations. Worry about Randall Stephenson getting $25 million a year.
Thank you for your tiny contribution racing us all to the bottom.
ITALIAN926

4 edits

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100% agree.
Lets rewind the clock 10 years and put ourselves in former VZ CEO Ivan Seidenbergs shoes.
This man was OBVIOUSLY able to read writing on the wall. Billions of yearly telco profits slowly eroding away due to an assortment VoIP companies, including cable incumbents themselves, AND the obvious skyrocketing use of cell phones.

Instead of watching his entire wireline business go extinct, he and their board had the courage to create a FTTP product which today Im guessing covers about 50% of their wireline footprint.
Why was it courageous? Because they decided to build this thing AND continue their responsibilities as an ILEC, meaning, maintaining the copper network as well as the building and maintaining the fiber.

I wont say McAdam is a total imbecile, he is looking at a wireless product that is currently faster than DSL technology, and his hands are still tied by these ridiculous sharing rules put in place to spur competition in the local telephone market, when NYNEX / Bell Atlantic was a monopoly. He is short-sighted, ignoring the products that will be available 10,50,100 years from now, and fiber will be the only pipe large enough to deliver them. Today, all the writing on the wall points to the eventual STREAMING of all video, high def, 3D, 4K, who knows what the future holds, virtual reality movies? Whether Verizon delivers this streaming video or not, is irrelevant.

Now, the overwhelming majority of people disagree with their reasons for Verizon to halt their builds, everyone acknowledes that FTTP will always have more capability than wireless, but this company needs some regulatory relief to make it worthwhile.

As much profit that their wireless division makes, it doesnt change the fact that Wireline does not do nearly as well. Every fiber build they make is profitable, its simply not short term cash like every investor wants.

If youre one of those telco monopoly people who believe the telephone companies should somehow build out a FTTP network , and be obligated to share it, then Lobby your politicians to inject 200billion dollars into the telco's , because I can assure you, they wont be doing that with their own money.

A more realistic plan would be to gut the 96 telecom act...

PSC's/PUC's , DOJ, FCC should come up with a plan that removes Verizons (and any other ILEC/RBOC) sharing responsibilities as an ILEC , ONLY as they replace their copper with FTTP. Consumers win, Verizon (and other telcoswin), Wireline Workers win, the Country wins. Losers? The cable companies lose due to actually getting competition, and the wholesale /clecs lose, but hey, feel free to negotiate with Verizon to sell over their fiber.
Simplest plan in the world, and is the right thing to do.
TheRogueX
join:2003-03-26
Springfield, MO

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I don't know, man. I've never had any sympathy for corporations like AT&T either.

congressive
@verizon.net

1 recommendation

congressive to ITALIAN926

Anon

to ITALIAN926
Thank you. I, too, am sick and tired of anti-union bullshit. Union workers fight hard for an average 14% higher wage than non-union, and in the process, pull non-union wages up as corporations have to compete for skilled labor. Time to burn this "evil union" strawman to the ground. It's not just stupid and uninformed, it's suicidal and contagious.

Michigan has become mentally deranged. They just passed and are now enforcing rape insurance laws in a state where you can't buy rape insurance. Google it. I'm tired of explaining. Michigan installs dictators while dismantling democratically elected local governments. Michigan voters deserve the hard porking they're going to get, since they keep re-electing representatives that pass this bullshit.

The U.S. Constitution mandates the maintenance of postal roads and offices. Clearly the internet serves the exact same modern day purpose of transporting information securely and affordably for ALL citizens. Time to hand over this duty to the USPS. "Oh, no. Then the US Postal Service will know where I live" I hear an army of imbeciles cry...

jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

jmn1207

Premium Member

I'm the person that initially mentioned unions. My point was that AT&T wants to hire the cheapest labor they can find, because they are short-sighted, greedy, and the leadership is emboldened by the needs of the shareholders to make choices that influence instant profit growth ahead of any other solid business decisions.

There are plenty of unions that are shitty and do not act on the behalf of their members. Corruption abounds, and when it does, it sees the front page of every news organization as it is among the most dastardly and egregious of acts. To pretend that you are supporting someone and looking after their best interests, only to be cheating them in reality, is about as bad as it gets.

That said, there are plenty of great unions, and the basic premise of what unions are supposed to stand for are righteous and necessary.

Still, unions are generally seen as a negative for the telecommunications conglomerates (or any huge corporation), because honest pay for honest work is NOT something that these jackasses want in their business model. They want the cheapest labor they can get that will complete the job. Unions are seen as an obstacle by the leadership in control. A critical factor in AT&T's future is how they can reduce their costs, and non-union labor is definitely a direction they have seriously considered.

Some unions are great, others have been historically not so great. That is an entirely different issue.

ITALIAN926
join:2003-08-16

3 edits

ITALIAN926

Member

Thank you, an expanded explanation is a good idea, because organized labor is not in the best of shapes right now, and such a simple sentence can easily bend a young, uninformed, mind furthering the difficulties labor faces.
Sure every once in a while a union might make a negative headline, but corrupt politicians and corporate upper management scumbags make the headlines 10X's more often.

and PS, the problem is not that AT&T is primarily union, the problem is that a large percentage of their competition is NON-union. If all the wireless employees, all the cable company techs were union, it would be an even playing ground for those various job titles. POS's like James Dolan using non-union labor as a competitive advantage is sickening. Those workers are slowly realizing they deserve better.