To set the record straight, I am a retired Verizon Manager with 40 years experience. My wife is forced to do an EWA or she will not have a job. We are in a good place, kids out of the house and I am staying in her hotel a few days a week. She had planned on getting a RIF this year and would have raised her hand at year end. With that said, the Union should have stayed on the job and continued to get paid and have benefits covered. Lowell wanted them to go out with a strategy to keep them out until the members started to cross. His intentions have always been to sell off the wireline side and to do that, break the Union. I just hope the BOD sees Frontier has been doing a great job will all the core assets we have sold off and starts grilling Lowell and his pack of 5. Only then wil be the change we all need to make Verizon the success it has always been.
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To the OP: First of all congratulations on retiring after 40 years great job! I don't think others will ever see 40 year at Verizon, certainly not mgt!
I agree with most everything you said, however, I do not think that Frontier is anything to really admire. They purchased expensive assets at a time when the market is changing - offering 300 linear channels is a dying offer. Frontier is also at the forefront of rolling out DSL to rural areas. While those subsidies may be attractive now, the maintenance and the recurring monthly revenue is low and often with higher risk subscribers. Bottom line, it was good for VZ to offload the 3 franchises, however, it was unfortunate that they could not dump the NE and mid-Atlantic too. I am sure many buyers throw up at the idea of getting Union employees as part of any deal. Verizon knows there is little competition for these workers, so it makes a good case for cutting their pay and benefits significantly The company just does not want them anymore.
There are some things Lowell and his cronies just don't understand. CWA-IBEW is too hard to break on account of three factors which are that the northeast is a militant union territory, the sheer size of the union (even at a reduced membership of 40,000), and the fact that skilled trade unions are far harder to break versus unskilled ones (factory workers, coal miners, etc) unless they can somehow transport Ronald RayGun to the future and step in with government intervention.
For all of you bean counters the company wouldn't even see a ROI for a decade or more considering the massive expenses and loss of business that their failure to have patience is bringing. The smart move by the company would have been to just keep reducing pre-2003 people with buyouts and hire more post-2003 workers that don't have the same protections and benefits. So this final move to strip the union had horrible timing by Verizon considering the political climate and exposure of their past practices which include a rigged tax system and failure to make good on their buildouts.
To sum it up, the braintrust in Basking Ridge couldn't be any dumber but that's what happens when a closed facility becomes prey to groupthink.
well he already made a fool of himself on linkedin that couldn't have helped.
The OP is right on the money! Lowell is the wrong person to be CEO of Verizon. He just gets only one aspect of the business. I too hope the major investors and the BOD finally start seeing this Hollywood CEO for what he is: totally lost in telecom land.
I will find another job before I go back under this contract proposal. My family already had spoke that if they don't come back with a fair deal we may leave nj for west coast. They way we get treated is horrible. I don't yell at my boss why would they yell at us? I made less this year and paid more medical bills than the past 25 years? Sorry but no thanks
The union leaders and their members played right into Lowell's hands. The CWA has been Verizon's best tool for the past two decades. But like most tools, it's outlived its usefulness and is now being put away for good.