While those of us outside Verizon's landline service area wouldn't notice that both the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and CWA (Communications Workers of America) are on strike against the telecommunications behemoth, it appears those within its service area really haven't really noticed either.
I can honestly say I am not surprised. After all, the landline portion of Verizon's business operations has been shrinking for well over a decade, with FiOS (their Fiber To The Home service) being the only portion of their landline services having seen any growth at all in that time, and that growth has tapered off as Verizon has scaled back further deployment.
What makes this strike so under-the-radar is that the unions are fighting for higher pay and benefits in an operation that has been breaking even at best, and losing money in less-than-best cases. Is it any wonder Verizon has been shedding itself of its less profitable landline operations over the past few years? Why else would they have sold their more rural (and money losing) operations to HawaiiTel, FairPoint, and Frontier? (Both HawaiiTel and FairPoint went into Chapter 11 a couple of years after buying those assets. Frontier has already had to seriously scale back some of the services Verizon used to offer when they owned the assets Frontier bought. That ought to tell you something.)
Yes, Verizon has posted billions in profits. But those profits came from their wireless and business operations (which are not unionized). How is it the CWA and IBEW figure they're due a portion of those profits? They sure as heck didn't help to create them. They're working in a business that is shrinking, both in the number of customers and profit margin. Do they really think Verizon will knuckle under to the unions when they are becoming an ever shrinking portion of their workforce covering a 100+ year old technology that is quickly being supplanted by other more flexible and less costly technologies? Apparently so.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of this contest of wills.
I can honestly say I am not surprised. After all, the landline portion of Verizon's business operations has been shrinking for well over a decade, with FiOS (their Fiber To The Home service) being the only portion of their landline services having seen any growth at all in that time, and that growth has tapered off as Verizon has scaled back further deployment.
What makes this strike so under-the-radar is that the unions are fighting for higher pay and benefits in an operation that has been breaking even at best, and losing money in less-than-best cases. Is it any wonder Verizon has been shedding itself of its less profitable landline operations over the past few years? Why else would they have sold their more rural (and money losing) operations to HawaiiTel, FairPoint, and Frontier? (Both HawaiiTel and FairPoint went into Chapter 11 a couple of years after buying those assets. Frontier has already had to seriously scale back some of the services Verizon used to offer when they owned the assets Frontier bought. That ought to tell you something.)
Yes, Verizon has posted billions in profits. But those profits came from their wireless and business operations (which are not unionized). How is it the CWA and IBEW figure they're due a portion of those profits? They sure as heck didn't help to create them. They're working in a business that is shrinking, both in the number of customers and profit margin. Do they really think Verizon will knuckle under to the unions when they are becoming an ever shrinking portion of their workforce covering a 100+ year old technology that is quickly being supplanted by other more flexible and less costly technologies? Apparently so.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of this contest of wills.
I never understood the logic used by Verizon in regards to FiOS.
Well before Verizon sold off its assets in northern New England to FairPoint, they had installed fiber all throughout one of the thickly settled border towns in New Hampshire and were just starting to hook up customers when they abandoned the project. Two years later they sold their operations to FairPoint.
The thing about FIOS, they didn't even turn it on everywhere they installed it. When I lived in Syracuse proper, we were very excited to see them installing the FIOS hardware on the poles. They turned it on in the neighborhood two blocks west. They turned it on the neighborhood three blocks east. They never did turn on my neighborhood, and then announced that they wouldn't be period.
That little 5 block neighborhood was no less packed with people (a large percentage of whom owned their own houses, and the few that didn't were split familys like mine) than any other nearby 5 block neighborhood, many of whom would have been ideal customers for FIOS. Our neighbors knew my husband worked there, and when they were wiring the FIOS stuff in asked him what was going on, when he told them it was FIOS they lit up and asked when it was going to be turned on. Verizon lost out on a bunch of customers there just because they never bothered to turn on that neighborhood. And they have only themselves to blame for it.
I have to agree that both sides carry equal fault. I wish Verizon would continue to deploy FiOS, but I think they've decided they've already managed to collect the so-called "low-hanging fruit". The amount of profit they'll make by continuing to deploy FiOS will decrease as they move out into more thinly settled areas. They won't necessarily lose money by doing so, they just won't make nearly as much as they do in the thickly settled metro areas.
Since FiOS isn't covered under Universal Service (copper is) they aren't required to deploy it everywhere within their footprint. That leaves it up to CLECs, cable MSOs, and municipal systems to do so. Here in New Hampshire and in neighboring Vermont groups of towns created their own co-ops to get FTTx to the homes in their areas since no one else was willing to do so. I think we'll see more of that as time goes on (and copper plant wears out).
Speaking as someone who's caught in the middle: I can say both sides are idiots, and both sides have good points.
If Verizon would get off its butt and keep pushing FIOS it would more than make up for what they're loosing in copper accounts. Seriously, very few homes are completely wireless (as in not only phone, but internet and TV), and very few homes WANT to be (satillite TV is ok, but has to many disruptions for me to be willing to consider it for internet unless it was my only choice). My parents still have copper service despite having cell phones and intend to KEEP their copper service (and its not because they're not techy, both my parents program for a living, they're techy). Verizon is also pushing to move call centers overseas, which I as a consumer hate (I don't care how well someone speaks English, having to parse a thick accent on a tech support call DOES NOT WORK WELL). My husband works in a call center for the wired side of business, and the call times for people calling in for help is average 30 minutes, 50 isn't unusual. Thats sitting on hold waiting for someone to answer so you can state you have a problem, and the wait times for those who need a tech to come out are just as bad. So maybe the wired side isn't making as much money, but they're also cutting their staff way to fast to support what they have.
On the union side.....like most major unions that have been around for a while they've gotten to big for their britches. Having employees paying almost nothing for their health insurance is simply not a viable option in today's economy. Pensions ought to be retired in exchange for more viable retirement plans. And stop with the "oh they're making money so we ought to get our share" BS (not to mention the idiots sabotaging things) while wondering why the public doesn't like unions any more.