Two unions are on strike against Verizon Communications in protest of proposed company policies that the unions themselves helped bring about. The new Obamacare law, which both unions supported, dramatically hikes the cost of Verizon’s employee health care plan. Efforts to pass some of that cost on to employees have sparked outrage. Verizon’s health care plan is what President Obama commonly referred to as a “Cadillac plan” – expensive and luxurious – during his push to get health care legislation through Congress. The new law will levy a 40 percent …
***UPDATE BELOW: Video of Verizon’s Bernadette Phillips discussing the many instances of apparent sabotage.*** Verizon has alleged more than 200 incidents of vandalism and sabotage against its equipment and facilities since 45,000 company employees went on strike on August 7. A source sent these photos, which seem to show very neatly sliced fiber-optic lines – apparent acts of sabotage, in other words, and potentially violations of federal law. Verizon says that the FBI is looking into the reports of sabotage. UPDATE (Aug. 18 – 19:00)
A New Jersey Superior Court issued an injunction against a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers, which is one of the two unions currently on strike against Verizon Communications, and represents about 10,000 of the 45,000 striking employees. The injunction prohibits a range of activities, some of which have reportedly been employed by various union picketers in efforts to obstruct or harass the company or its workers since the strike began more than a week ago. Among the practices specifically forbidden under the court’s ruling: the throwing …
Strikes continued Thursday against Verizon Communications by 45,000 members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions. Tensions continue to run high, and yet more reports of potentially illegal activity have emerged – beyond the sabotage Verizon alleges it has endured. Under the National Labor Relations Act, it is illegal for a picketing union to prevent non-striking employees from entering company facilities. But in the last couple days, there have been numerous apparent instances of Verizon strikers doing just that. A judge in Allegheny County, …
Verizon employees went on strike this week in protest of the company’s proposed changes to its employee benefits. The company’s collective bargaining agreement expired at midnight on Saturday. By Sunday, Verizon was already alleging a dozen instances of sabotage, and illegal attempts by strikers to block managers from entering Verizon facilities. According to a Verizon press release, the company endured: Ten incidents of fiber-optic lines being deliberately cut in the Bronx, Pomona, Farmingdale and Guilderland in New York; two separate incidents in Tewksbury in Massachusetts; incidents in Bel Air in …
Just days before Congress recesses for the upcoming elections, House Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman stepped into the debate over Internet regulation yesterday, releasing draft legislation to impose certain “neutrality” rules to providers of broadband Internet service. Hammered out in negotiations over the past few weeks with the active participation of Google, Verizon, and other competing broadband industry players, the final product—not surprisingly—looks a lot like the Google–Verizon consensus plan announced last month. Specifically, the Waxman proposal would ban Internet access providers such as Verizon from blocking content outright but …
Americans are increasingly cutting the cord on their phones. By the most recent estimates, 40 percent Americans rely primarily on their wireless phone for voice calls, and most of those don’t have a wireline phone at all. But don’t count me in that number. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to cut the cord. It’s that I can’t. I live in a cellular hole, one of those thousands of places where wireless connections are weak or non-existent. The reason isn’t geography—I live in a well-developed part of the Washington metro …
The FCC’s plans for regulating the Internet through “neutrality” regulation—once considered on a fast track—was sidetracked once again yesterday as the agency announced a new round of public comments on possible regulation. It is one more twist in the drama that net neutrality has become, at least for those who see administrative procedure as exciting. It’s a welcome twist, affording an opportunity to more fully consider some key dangers of regulation. At the same time, the delay underscores the difficulty that regulation supporters face in putting together a plan for …
Remember the White House’s insistence that, under Obamacare, you keep your insurance plan if you like it? We didn’t believe it then. Turns out we were right. CNN reports that AT&T, Verizon, John Deere and others may well drop the health care coverage they now offer their employees. Obamacare makes it much cheaper for these companies to dump their workers into the government-controlled health exchanges and pay a penalty for NOT insuring them. From CNN:
This month, Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) sent a letter to the Chairman of the FCC and the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, asking them to investigate cell phone exclusivity agreements. Exclusivity agreements are arrangements between cell phone makers and service providers to allow one carrier the exclusive rights to sell a particular phone for a period of time. One of the major objections by Sen. Kohl and others was that these agreements disproportionately hurt rural Americans, and those who were customers of smaller carriers. Then, last week, Verizon …
