The IBEW System Council T6 telephone locals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and IBEW Local 827 representing Verizon workers in New Jersey have filed a position paper and comments with the Federal Communications Commission on Verizon’s recent ventures with the cable companies to purchase wireless spectrum licenses. The IBEW T6 & IBEW Local 827 do not believe that this transaction is in the public’s best interest. The unions have urged the FCC to evaluate whether this deal negatively affects the Verizon workers and the communities throughout the region currently served by Verizon. The unions believe this will create a disincentive to build FiOS telecom services across the region and also allow Verizon to continue to abandon the core copper networks. In addition, the unions believe that this deal raises significant concerns in regards to a potential collusive relationship between Verizon and the cable companies.
Ballots were mailed last week.All members in good standing should have received their ballots.If you have not received your ballot, please contact the Union Hall.
Please follow the instruction on the back of the ballot and remember to put your name and address on the return envelope.
Completed ballots must be received no later than Friday, June 1st by 9AM.
All ballots received after 9AM on Friday June 1st will not be counted.
If you have any questions about the ballot or the election process, please call the Union Hall and request to speak with the Election Judge.
Verizon Communications and AT&T together represent the largest providers of legacy copper wire landline phone service in the United States. Over the past ten years, the traditional landline business has taken a beating as consumers increasingly turn their backs on the technology Alexander Graham Bell helped invent more than 100 years ago. No utility service faces more customer defections than the phone company, and providers are increasingly rewriting their business models or lobbying to abandon unprofitable service areas altogether.
For some customers, investments in network improvements have brought advanced fiber optics straight to the home. But in smaller communities, customers are making due with a deteriorating network phone companies no longer want to maintain.
On Behalf of the Officers and Executive Board of Local 2321, we would like to congratulate the following winner of the 2012 Massachusetts AFL/CIO Scholarship Program:
·Dennis Case Memorial Scholarship: Tyler Morelli
·John Nicolini Memorial Scholarship: Alaina Warren
·Gerry Schiavo Memorial Scholarship: Leanne Jenkins
·Dana Perham Memorial Scholarship: Allyssa Furtado
·Charles Car Memorial Scholarship: Tyler Hanides
·Francis McKenney Scholarship: Kevin Saunders
We extend our best wishes for the future to these young scholars. Congratulations!
Verizon, AT&T push to end universal landline service
Reuters
David Cay Johnston
April 10, 2012
The guarantee of landline telephone service at almost any address, a legal right many Americans may not even know they have, is quietly being legislated away in U.S. state capitals. AT&T and Verizon, the dominant telephone companies, want to end their 99-year-old universal service obligation known as "provider of last resort." They say universal landline service is a costly and unfair anachronism that is no longer justified because of a competitive market for voice services.
The new rules AT&T (Dallas, Texas, USA) and Verizon (New York) drafted would enhance profits by letting them serve only the customers they want. Their focus, and that of smaller phone companies that have the same universal service obligation, is on well-populated areas where people can afford profitable packages that combine telephone, Internet and cable television.
Sprint (Overland Park, Kan., USA), T-Mobile USA (Bellevue, Wash., USA) and the cell phone divisions of AT&T and Verizon are not subject to universal service and can serve only those areas they find profitable.
Unless the new rules are written very carefully, millions of people, urban and rural, will lose basic telephone service or be forced to pay much more for calls.
Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin already have repealed universal service obligations. No one has been cut off yet, but once almost every state has ended universal service it could mean that some parts of the landline system may shut down.
Years of subtle incremental legal changes have brought the telephone companies within sight of ending universal service, which began in 1913 when AT&T President Theodore Vail promised "one system, one policy, universal service" in return for keeping Ma Bell's monopoly.
AT&T wants universal service obligations to end wherever two or more voice services are available, said Joel Lubin, AT&T's public policy vice president. Verizon promotes a similar approach.
State capitals are seeing intense lobbying to end universal service obligations but with little public awareness due to the dwindling ranks of statehouse reporters.
The Utility Rate Network, a consumer advocate group, identified 120 AT&T lobbyists in Sacramento, one per California lawmaker. Mary Pat Regan, president of AT&T Kentucky, told me she has 36 lobbyists in that state working on the company's bill to end universal landline service.
People whose landline service ends would have three options. First would be a cell phone, a reasonable substitute in many areas. But cell phones do not work in many rural expanses. Cell phones cost at least $25 for limited minutes, while lifeline services - which the companies offer to low-income people - start at $2 and, with unlimited local calls, at about $10.
Second would be Internet calling. That requires broadband Internet service. Verizon charges $49.99, plus additional charges by unregulated calling companies like Vonage, whose rates start at $25.99. On top of this $75 expense would be taxes and the cost of buying and maintaining a computer, a device alien to many older and poor Americans.
Third would be satellite service. Thomas Hazlett, a George Mason University economist who studies rural phone costs, says satellite service is "the way to go for service in outlying areas." Although, satellite does requires a computer, costs at least $29.95 and many users have complained about unauthorized charges and connection problems.
Verizon CEO Lowell C. McAdam doesn't quite have all of those SpectrumCo AWS licenses in his pocket just yet, but if he does get them he has a decidedly old school idea of what to flood the airwaves with: TV. The Wall Street Journal quotes him saying Verizon and its new cable friends could have "the beginnings of an integrated offering" out by the holidays, so pay-TV customers could watch video on their mobile devices. Even though many of the TV services are already streaming video to tablets, PCs and phones, currently most subscription services are limited to the space of the home's WiFi network, unlike the video on-demand seen above. According to McAdam the potential to negotiate rights for outside the home streaming and even busting open the bundles for à la carte programming exist -- provided the FCC and DOJ allow Verizon to complete the proposed $3.9 billion purchase. Of course, consumption based billing would still be on the table, so don't start planning your streaming schedule just yet. For now we'll wait and see if the pros of this arrangement outweigh the cons (and how its Redbox play is mixed up in this), or if the pie-in-the-sky NowTV-style elements of the plan are merely being floated to get the deal done.
In response to yesterday’s Verizon corporate-wide e-mail from Verizon’s Executive Vice President & General Counsel on strike misconduct, I am reaching out to members in our local to reaffirm our position on the Strike Discipline & Terminations.Upon returning to work from the strike, Verizon did not honor their commitment in the return to work agreement, by not giving the unions the evidence on the alleged misconduct so we would know what security was investigating.Instead, the affected union members were given a letter with a conclusion that they engaged in what Verizon is calling strike misconduct.Verizon security wanted to interview these employees without providing the unions the specific dates, times and instances of the alleged misconduct. What every member should know is that we are not going to allow Verizon security or any manager to go on a fishing expedition.Verizon had already concluded that these employees were guilty of something without input from the employee and the union, because they had already suspended them.
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) allows us protection of concerted activity and includes the right to request assistance from union representatives during investigatory interviews. This was declared by the Supreme Court in 1975 in NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc. The rights announced by the Court have become known as Weingarten rights.Weingarten rights apply during investigatory interviews and under Weingarten, the company has to informthe union of the subject matter of the interview. Verizon would not provide this information to the union before the investigation and more importantly as I have stated, Verizon had already made their decision of guilt by suspending the employees prior to any investigation and then only provided a letter to the employee with Verizon’s conclusion of their alleged misconduct based on management’s allegations.We have challenged this with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by filing an Unfair Labor Practice charges.
Before final disciplinary determinations were made, the unions were provided with copies of the Verizon Security reports.We conducted our own investigation and concluded that these members should not be disciplined at all, based on the facts, the flaws in the investigation and relevant NLRB case law. We believe that Verizon security and management coerced and fabricated many instances in their reports of misconduct.The credibility of the whole security report and the investigations in general, give rise to some serious questions about the integrity of the whole process.We interviewed the employees and witnesses and gathered notarized affidavits attesting to the bogus allegations made by management and the embellishment of facts detailed in the Verizon security interviews.
Despite the efforts of Verizon’s Executive Vice President & General Counsel to try and dispel rumors or distort the facts and fairness of the whole process, as outlined in his corporate wide email to all employees yesterday, we firmly believe that the four members who were suspended and returned to work and the three members who were terminated in our local will all be exonerated.Verizon’s actions on suspending and terminating members across the Verizon East Coast footprint are now being scrutinized by a governmental agency. We have filed Unfair Labor Practice charges with the NLRB for every suspension and termination. Investigatory interviews by an NLRB agent are underway and just about completed.Although this process takes time and is very costly to the unions, it is necessary in advocating for the rights of the affected members as well as all of our collective interests and rights to challenge Verizon on their egregious conduct.Eventually, an administrative law judge for the NLRB will make the determinations based on the facts presented and the credibility of the witnesses.
Another important fact to keep in mind is that Verizon also refused to afford the suspended and terminated union members arbitration rights, something Verizon insisted they would not give to these members and this fact was conveniently excluded from the corporate wide e-mail sent out to every Verizon employee yesterday. They can grieve it but not arbitrate it, how fair is that?
In closing, I would like to thank the membership for all of your support over the last year, in fighting for a fair contract and respecting and helping out the suspended and terminated members and their families. It has been frustrating on all of us the way Verizon treats the workers. Unfortunately, it has been going on for years as this company has changed and abandoned the workers who made the phone company, now Verizon, a very successful and profitable company.
