HELLO? HELLO????

Here we go again. Unions mucking up the works for everyone else. The two unions in this article are a big reason for the poor quality of service delivered up by their network, their poor issue resolution times, and their shitty customer service. No one is allowed to work - they are only allowed to do their "job" - and if anyone else tries to solve the problem the unions tools file a grievance which results in more wasted time for everyone and in the end fails to solve anything (except the union tool gets paid for the time spent in arbitration hearings).

Let the unions walk. The days of specialized blue collar work are over - it's too standardized to screw up so get the Central Americans in here and let them have the jobs.

The penguin because he looks like a union shitting on the general public.

Last time I checked "labour" has a "u" in it.

And your company isn't allowed to employ you for Shelf Stacking and then turn around and get you to fix the electrical system or type a letter for them.

As long as the management WANT to abuse their workers (i.e. until we evolve a smarter human), unions WILL be needed.

Read the by-line, AC: "By Cade Metz in San Francisco"

Last time I was in San Francisco, it was still part of the United States, where they rather endearingly spell labour without a "u".

Just be thankful that the strike doesn't involve Kaiser Aluminum.

Have you every worked for a telco ??

"and if anyone else tries to solve the problem the unions tools file a grievance which results in more wasted time for everyone and in the end fails to solve anything (except the union tool gets paid for the time spent in arbitration hearings)."

Thats the biggest load of shit I've ever heard of. IF the workers are not allowed to solve a problem thats a management issue. Unions care about member ship.

I've been part of CWA. please show me were you get paid for filing grievance ..

it's too standardized to screw up so get the Central Americans in here and let them have the jobs.

Um ok let me hand you the tools and you fix a broken T1 line since it so easy.

Slaps AC. yes its in America so there is no "u" in labor

they got did of all those useless workers following their customers around.

@solomon please tell me which brand of magic mushrooms , Columbia's finest supplied direct to your door by the DEA or is it Jamaica Gold Ganja you are smoking in the La La land you are living in !

Or perhaps you should listen to heart before the meaningless diatribe you preach departs from your keyboard to the already educated and knowing tech savvy masses in the wild world of the intertubes !

Prudent suggestion , is that you should find the full facts of the case before uttering your useless and unwanted meaningless string of empty vacuum packed thoughts on the masses or they may thus give you the "Total Dumb and Ignorant A&&** of the year Award"

As for Verizon the majority of it's problems are caused by a combination of bean counters and senior upper echelon in management unable to get past the words "Me , myself and I and none for you !" , and minimal capital is spent for either maintenance or expenditure on upgraded expansion equipment to meet the bandwidth that it's marketing department oversells on a daily basis !

Ah the words that less then very bright babies in the woods utter in the land of "Idiocracy" the land where even democracy is bought and sold to the lowest bidder and all freedoms are imaginary or meaningless words on paper !

Choices , even that certain socialite will always remain far brighter then your already dim and rapidly fading star back to obscurity of troll world from whence you came !

PS I gather in your total ignorance of the facts of the matter in hand , you have never read from cover to cover the past five years annual SEC Stock Holders Report public filings from said company have we ?

If your income involves exploitation of others then I am sure you are anti unions, if you work an honest living then you are probably pro union.

Unions give the workers power, because they can act as a collective, it is stupid not to be in a union unless you are sitting their controlling the money flow in a business.

Normally management is not allowed to be in a union, as per their contract, but if you are not paid a management salary, and not privy to management information then a union is your best bet.

Truth of the matter is we have too many people in this world, people breeding need to realise they are part of the problem, 0.5 children max per person for a few generations, and that would sort it out. If world population was one million, then we would all live like Kings and Queens. Which oddly is why wars are good if you manage to survive them, and economic prosperity normally follows them; we just have more space, and more opportunity to rebuild from the destruction. The National Trust, preserve the Green Belt etc are actually the ones causing the problem, knock old stuff down, and build all the time, then you have prosperity, it is the speed of money through an economy that makes us rich, not the maintenance of the past.

Unions are a necessary thing in a crowded society because of management. And, management should not be necessary in today's society, people should be educated enough to manage their own work. And that's the problem really, management wield power by controlling the money, not adding value, but reducing value in the workforce. The unions act to increase the value of the workforce. If you want to get rid of unions, then we have to get rid of management, but they won't go without a fight either.

Marxism is the answer of course, but it always get perverted, and turned into a cathedral structure, therefore anarchy is the solution, the removal of the existing structures and period of rebuild. We should really go through periods of anarchy and rebuild, it is much better for the human spirit, and it keeps everyone on their toes, reduces complacency and gives a natural order to things - those who try and maintain control via a system are the problem, forcing us all closer to poverty.

So, yeah, yay go union.

Yes Mr. Grundy. It is all the fault of the unions! We know that. Companies, from the goodness of their hearts are more than willing to share in the benefits of being successful. That is why IBM is DROPPING the wages of their factory workers by 20% after attaining RECORD PROFITS! Please, please, please, drop the knee jerk rhetoric spoon fed to the public by corporate sponsored politicians.

Think. Think for yourself. Open your eyes and investigate the reality of the world and see for yourself whether or not it corresponds with the propaganda.

Not only has IBM done this to the factory workers, please, Google what IBM (as well as many other record profit making companies) did to their workers retirement packages about a year ago.

Oh... but blame the unions because they are the bad guys. Dear God, protect me from parrots that don't use critical thinking, just mimicking something that they are told.

We, in American, don't have a problem in education teaching science and math, we have a problem in teaching critical thinking and being critical consumers of information. It might appear that England has the same problem. Think for yourself!!!!!!!!

Mines the one with the leather patches on the elbows.

Is that 0.33 of the workforce or 0.033?

I see the good in unions, but the one glaring fault with unions which I have seen is the prevention of firing someone who refuses to do his or her job at an adequate level. So then the employer has to hire another person to handle the workload sloughed by the first employee, said new employee becomes disenfranchised by the first's lack of productivity, and the process repeats.

Of course, it also happens at a lot of government levels, and in environments where lawsuits are the big scary monster.

I say if a person does not do his or her job, fuck the lawyers and let the little bitches sue. The employer should then be able to file a counter-suit against the former employee for the amount of productivity lost because of them.

Yeah, touched a nerve. I despise people who take on a job and then bitch about how (God forbid) they're required to *gasp* work.

Paris, leaded of the gainfully unemployed.

I do think for myself - and I don't assume a union is an answer for anything. Unions, like most things in this world, have outlived their usefullness. They have gotten more and more corrupt as time has gone on.

For instance, their latest ploy is to make it so that when voting for whether to unionize, that your vote be public. Folks, here in Amierca, that is NOT how we work. The secret ballot is there for a reason - to PREVENT what they are trying to do, namely shame/intimidate people into voting a certain way. When I heard this crap was being attempted, I knew unions had jumped the shark.

So save YOUR brainless pratter about how good unions are. If they have to attempt to resort to THIS kind of crap to unionize a place (Walmart btw) then it's time they are stopped. Period. There is no excuse for this, Mr. critical thinker.

Darren, YOU are the parrot here - and are mostly likely involved with a union. Dear God protect me from people like you. Apparently you are a product of the good ol' unionized teaching force - the primary problem with education here.

These days, unions are about making sure NO ONE can be fired. They make sure that your performance has little to do with your job. They make sure you wage is high while the company takes a nose dive into the dirt (anyone remember Eastern Airlines? Unions might not have caused the problems but they pretty much helped put an end to the company)

Let's talk about dock workers, for instance. Dock workers. Sorry guys, but that's not exactly a rocket-scientist job. Take a look at what those guys make and hour and what their benefits are. All for moving boxes around. It will make you sick, well, unless you happen to be a dock worker of course.

Unions are corrupt to the core. At one time, they served a purpose - employees were being exploited. That is just not a huge problem in the US anyore, despite what people like Darren want to tell you.

So please - do think for yourselves. Don't trust what anyone has to say, INCLUDING the people telling you that unions are good.

This is serious. Given all the folks I see who can't seem to live without a cell phone affixed to their ear, the US of A is about to go into sever aural loss conniptions. This has got to be a terrorist influenced event and Homeland Insecurity just must investigate and ruin someone's life.

I hope the hospitals are watching this because withdrawal cases will overwhelm and clog emergency rooms. Not to mention teenagers who wont be able to communicate at all.

No wait... oh never mind.

the 11th of august is not till 2013 so they have some time still before the walkout :/

Stupid americans can't spell.

well, it certainly is an emotive subject, going of all the flaming here.

I would suggest that there are some unions that are pretty useless and 'corrupt to the core' and I'm sure there are many unions that serve their members well.

What the nay-sayers are forgetting is that much of the abuse perpetrated by employers that prompted the forming of the first unions, is prevented nowadays by the mere presence of the unions. Therefore, even tho a union may seem pointless, it is not reasonable to say they are ineffective without actually removing them and seeing what happens.

Sometimes unions are fine. But, in this case, with a downturning economy, the demands of maintaining 100% payed for health coverage, a 12% raise, and permenant job sercurity, none of which mid management at Verizon have, is idiotic.

Wow this article or author is PC. Why not call Verizon what they are, a telco monopoly that has been granted virtual immunity by our corrupt government. So they made them break up into separate 'companies' it's all still one monopoly running everything. They lock cell tower areas with the corrupt local politicians, they sue in areas they can't or are unwilling to compete in (VOIP) and as far as I can tell they arent' doing a whole lot to upgrade their infrastructure. Fios surely isn't rolling anywhere near my home anytime soon. Guess they are still just focusing on those wealthy areas.

"That is why IBM is DROPPING the wages of their factory workers by 20% after attaining RECORD PROFITS!"

That is deplorable and bad for the factory workers but due to the structure and goal of shareholder companies this is not at all reprehensible (if true). IBM is not a commune. And the tendency to ruthlessly exploit workers Metropolis-like is clearly counteracted by the predictable results you get when paying peanuts.

They may still have some benefits, but many abuse their power these days. For example, here there's a proposal to let civilian flagmen direct traffic around road work crews. The policemen's union opposes this and wants to keep the status quo - requiring a police officer - citing safety concerns and such. This is in addition to their regular jobs, and they earn tens of thousands of dollars in overtime. What the union doesn't like to mention is that currently, civilians are used if no police officer is available, and there's no threat to public safety or anything else objectionable about it.

A year or so ago there was a fire in which two firefighters died. One had cocaine in his blood, the other had a blood alcohol level of 0.24 (limit for drunkenness is 0.08). The board investigating what happened, all union firemen, refused to look at the coroner's reports. So their conclusions make no mention of the men being drunk or high, as they deliberately chose not to see the evidence of it.

These unions aren't about protecting or empowering workers. They're about greed and corruption, nothing more.

I used to work there. So much stuff is automated (they called it MECHANIZED, harking back to the first mechanical switches) that they don't need 60% of the employees they have. They send management out to do REAL work for a change (fixing inside wiring and collecting coins ... well they USED to collect them when they had pay phones. They save enough doing this for three days to pay for whatever concessions they make.

Instead of creating their own idea of what a medical/pension/medical retirement ought to be, just have the contract state they want the same as the US Federal Civil Service gets.

What's management going to do then? Complain that civil servants in the Federal bloatocracy are paid too much in benefits and private industry can't possibly afford such an expense (and who is paying the bloatocrats anyway?).

The elephant in the room that is being ignored, is that apparently private industry (at least in the US without a real public pension/medical program) can't afford medical and pensions, but the other 1/3 of the workforce (the Fed, State, local, and various and sundry "unions" like school teachers sucking at the public teat) apparently can afford to pay blue sky rates.... and if GASP ever gets its act together all those govwankers will have to own up to the hidden debt bomb that makes GM's puny VEBA payout look like round off error on an HP calculator (one of the old ones that really worked well, like an HP41CX). All those IBEW workers thought 2.5T for Iraq was a lot of money.... the 4 highest states combined exceed that in under financed future pension/medical debt, never mind the Fed-- and the debt is growing faster the fresh road kill armadillo on a hot Texas highway at high noon.