Interesting article
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steve forbes is a loser and like most heirs blames working people instead of his almightyness http://www.businessinsider.com/forbes-heirs-nearly-bankrupted-forbes-media-while-taking-100-million-for-themselves-2011-7
Totally inaccurate article
But I'm not surprised that a Multi Billionaire mogul writes a biased article for a Multi Billionaire corporation
Forbes is having lunch with Lowell on his yacht
This world has truly been brainwashed
Why don't people want good paying jobs in this country?
Hi I'm Steve Forbes and I'm here to protect my pals. I'd rather see what Nick Hanuer has to say. Didn't this Forbes moron have a failed run at the presidency once?
Forbes nailed it. Feel the BERN. DERP.
Union-bamboozled workers who reject comfy wage and benefit packages will be left behind in shrinking sector.
Next month will mark seven years since General Motors’ bankruptcy. The anniversary will coincide with the 50th day of work stoppage since unionized workers in Verizon’s old landline phone business went on strike. The juxtaposition will likely go largely unnoticed, but it should unnerve those picketers.
It is almost as hard to find a payphone these days as it is to find a Pontiac dealership. The world has changed, but Big Labor does not want to change with it. The lavish compensation packages unions enjoyed in the 20th century monopoly days belong in a museum beside the Pontiac GTO and rotary dial telephones. Yet union leadership continues to ignore modern realities.
Some lessons, it seems, are learned only the hard way.
On April 13, Communications Workers of America members employed in Verizon’s shrinking landline business (they are just over a fifth of Verizon’s employees) walked out on salary and compensation packages that most American workers could only dream about.
By most accounts, the principal stumbling block is Verizon’s insistence on greater flexibility in where and how it can deploy its workforce as customer needs or emergency situations dictate. The unions cast any loosening of the these rules as too big an imposition on the lives of workers. In a changing industry with a receding customer base, it’s not hard to see why this issue is paramount to the dispute.
The average Verizon telecom worker in the Northeast is paid $130,000 to $160,000 a year in salary and benefits. In pay alone, an average striking customer service employee earns $69,000. Verizon’s unionized employees typically enjoy guaranteed pay increases, generous health insurance coverage, a 401(k) match for retirement and a separate pension.
On top of all of this, Verizon has offered a 7.5% wage increase. In addition the generous 401(k) and defined pension plans continue. If all that weren’t enough, these workers would still retain protection from layoffs. Can you imagine how many American workers would yearn for such a guarantee?
Walking away from such an offer, especially in this economy, is lunacy. Labor leaders who convince their members that these terms are unreasonable are living in a fantasy world, one that pines for the days of the Ma Bell telecom monopoly contracts. It is the same antiquated thinking — and stubbornness — that contributed to the collapse of GM.
Many factors led to GM’s bankruptcy, but there is no question that unsustainable labor contracts played a major role. GM was paying average labor costs for United Auto Workers members of $69 an hour while Honda and Toyota paid $44 an hour.
Leonard Woodcock, president of the UAW for most of the 1970s, once said, “Our members have the best contract that people with their skills and education could ever hope to get. But we've convinced them that with every new contract, they're entitled to more.” That attitude, out of date by a generation, still prevails among labor leadership.
The GM example is not the only one that should worry Verizon’s CWA members. FairPoint Communications workers in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine went on a similar strike in 2014 though their labor leaders knew major concessions had to be made. In the end, the company lost millions, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the CWA agreed to deep cuts in retirement and health care benefits and to looser restrictions on hiring outside contractors.
Verizon’s unionized employees work in a shrinking sector. Consumers have spoken, and mobile is the technology of the future. Landline phone and home Internet connections service generate only a small portion of Verizon’s profits while representing a very disproportionate portion of its costs.
But the future doesn’t have to be grim if labor bosses are willing to end the strike and agree to a contract that is mutually beneficial and — most importantly — sustainable. The hardworking men and women of the CWA and IBEW deserve better from their leadership.
The unions agreed Sunday to further negotiations, but as long as the strike continues, a sustainable future for both Verizon and its unionized workforce seems further off. Without a more realistic approach, Big Labor threatens to lead the workers it claims to represent into a future that looks more like Detroit than Silicon Valley.
Steve Forbes is chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media.
Just saw somebody else posted link to same article...nevermind!
More like a garbage biased article from an upper 1 percenter