There's a cyclical nature to it and it relies on the greed of the cable operator, the desire of management to suck up and polish their superiors' knobs, and the fact that contracts which would in any other industry be held to be multilateral and binding on all parties are essentially blank pieces of paper you sign in blood, where they can do with them as they like.
1. In-house numbers are high. Pay is not bad.
2. Greed keeps their pay from keeping up with inflation, changing economies, etc.
3. Middle management seeks to force more work numbers out of the same number of workers.
4. In-house performance drops in response to 2 & 3 as they have increased load and no increase in incentive to cover that load or the load they started with.
5. In-house numbers drop as contractors replace them.
6. Contractor numbers are high. Pay is not bad.
7. Greed keeps their pay from keeping up with inflation, changing economies, etc.
8. Greed and unilateral contracts allow their pay to actually be reduced midstream.
9. Middle management seeks to force more work numbers out of the same number of workers.
10. Contractor performance drops in response to 7, 8, & 9, as they have increased load and no increase in incentive to cover that load or the load they started with.
11. Contractor numbers drop as in-house replace them.
12. Go to 1.
You can vary the tune by adding in pushes for new service roll-outs, system rebuilds, etc., but you get the picture. Also, sprinkle with bad demographic areas known to have high resistance to the incumbent operator(read: they HATE the operator and would kill their techs or any other representative if only they could get away with it). Salt down with bad infrastructure which has been bad since the original build and obfuscation, avoidance, and CYA are not only a way of life, but a spiritual calling in that system and you're thinking naively that you're going to do good work and fix it. (HA!)
Short of getting some legislators on the side of the workers, I don't see this getting fixed. Same goes basically for satellite workers.
Unionization is not really working as the continued foot-dragging between the CWA/workers and SBC goes on its merry way. Heck, having the CWA representing you is like handing over a blank contract signed in blood and witnessed by the Almighty. Beyond useless. We'd need a union that had most of either or both parties in their back pocket and as or more powerful than the Teamsters ever were. Even then it would be an uphill battle and fat chance of getting the public behind us as they'd just see our fight for decent pay and solid contracts as one more cause of their price increases.
We are in a pickle.
Re: Time To Picket!!!
Member #: 30886
Registered: 5/23/2004
Posted:
2
Name:
Dish Pimp
Occupation:
Broadband/DBS/DSL Technician
Location:
CT
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