You cannot afford to hire an attorney at $200 to $300 and hour to fight over your $12,000 car and have to pay those bills. People need to become aware that they have some rights, even when going up agains these giant companies that try to intimidate.
- Vince Megna
A greedy father has thieves for children.
- Serbian proverb
Avarice, the spur of industry.
- David Hume
I don’t often pay much attention to labor issues, strikes, and the like. Too much shouting, too much recrimination, and too little honest dialogue. Frankly, it all makes my head hurt, and to make matters worse it bores me to tears.
Then there are the glaring exceptions to my normal antipathy to labor issues…like the Verizon strike, f’rinstance. This strike seems like nothing if not illustration that greed is far from dead and that there are those in executive suites and Armani suits who would steal the last crumb of bread from a starving child if they could figure out how to monetize it for their own benefit. I’m not as familiar with the issues and personalities behind the Verizon strike as I’d like to be, but there are a few things that raise some red flags for me, even though I’m no expert on the dispute.
45,000 Verizon employees went on strike over the weekend after negotiations broke down. The Communication Workers of America has been pushing back against a long list of concessions being demanded of workers by Verizon management.
Wage and benefit rollbacks are time-honored tactics used by businesses to weather tough economic times. Except that in this case, even with the tough economy, Verizon is sitting pretty. The company’s quarterly report from January indicated that profits had doubled from the same time in the previous year.
After Verizon began offering Apple’s iPhone, Bloomberg reported that the company’s profits had more than tripled.
Verizon’s 2010 annual report indicated that the company’s stock had outperformed both the S&P 500 and the telecom industry as a whole.
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg was paid $18.1 million last year.
Verizon’s top five executives have received compensation totaling $258 over the past five years.
Verizon is a notorious corporate tax dodger, and pays little in federal taxes.
Verizon’s upper management may be living in the lap of luxury, but the rank-and-file are, like most Americans, struggling to make ends meet. So why the push to squeeze workers when the company is so successful and executives are so handsomely compensated? When does a company like Verizon realize and admit that its success is largely BECAUSE of its workers- NOT in spite of them? Granted, I’m no fan of Verizon. I was a cell phone subscriber for several years. Their customer service sucks- most of the reps I had the misfortune to deal with were haughty and dismissive. A phone call to Verizon Customer Service was always like having oral surgery minus the anesthetic. Still, Verizon didn’t get to where it is today by carrying excess employees. Their employees are not overhead, nor are they interchangeable parts. If management feels that cuts need to be made and efficiencies developed, then it stands to reason that those at the top should be setting an example by showing their commitment to shared sacrifice for the greater good of the company.
The strategy pursued by Verizon management is simultaneously insensitive, unrealistic, and dismissive of the crucial role that their 45,000 employees play in driving the success the company has achieved. Employees are not interchangeable parts that can be removed and replaced without thought or consequence. These are real people who work hard at what they do and make nowhere near the $18.1 million their CEO does. Either Verizon management thinks the role of workers is to support their accumulation of wealth, or they simply don’t care about the 45,000 who make that wealth a reality. Worst of all, it makes management look like a collection of corporate greedheads who lack even the barest and most basic shred of humanity.
Nice work if you can get it….
