Word: verizon
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...never easy to have a phone line installed in New York City, but on Monday it was well nigh impossible. Thanks to the striking Verizon workforce, thousands of requests usually filled by the Bell Atlantic-GTE offshoot went unanswered, even as company officials continued their talks with about 85,000 deeply disgruntled employees. The workers, who tend to the telephone needs of roughly 25 million Verizon customers, primarily along the eastern seaboard, are up in arms over the company's refusal to allow wireless employees to unionize. There are other labor issues at stake as well - forced overtime, job stress...
...country's traditional telephone workforce, remains an unreachable ideal for many in the wireless world. Telecommunications giants, basking in their newfound power over the wireless marketplace, jealously guard any competitive advantage and discourage union talk among their new employees, occasionally to the point of intimidation (at least one Verizon worker has reported threats from management after she began looking into union membership...
...problem for Verizon management, of course, is that this isn't the pre-Norma Rae era, when the media were less clued in to labor issues and management could double-talk their way through negotiations without sustaining any serious damage. And of course, today's tight labor market gives workers' demands a great deal more economic weight. The Verizon workers who walked out Monday know they've got considerable clout - after all, if management can't find a way to get them back to work soon, Verizon corporate types could have the whole of New York City to contend with...
...sending e-mail on something smaller than a Twinkie. But I've always thought carrying a cell phone everywhere you went was silly--just another must-have gadget designed to keep boredom at bay. Factor in the $400 list price from Sprint PCS (or $500 from Verizon Wireless), and this bauble struck me as something I could live without...
...This is all music to Wall Street's ears. Both Verizon (the joint Vodafone/Bell Atlantic venture) and AT&T Wireless have IPOs planned for the coming months that are expected to raise in excess of $10 billion apiece. Executives from Bell South and SBC say their venture could have a similarly huge Wall Street debut. What's more, industry experts expect the number of U.S. cell phone users (currently around 80 million) to double within five years. The cell phone market is expected to grow substantially this summer, when the FCC plans to auction off several billion dollars' worth...