Getting a national contract is a TALL order. I only know of about 3 in the private sector, and those came after about 25 years of have local and reginoal contracts, and their companies were nationwide. Its just cant be done in cable/sat. Maybe sat, if DISH or DTV began to hire directly, but it wold only cover the employees of those 2 compapnies.
I feel the only way to do it is for MSO and HSP employees to organize, and those who work for contractors must stop working for middle companies. Sign union cards, and try a bargain a contract directly with the primes and HSPs.
This would not be a drastic change as far how things operate. Techs bargain a contract with the prime. The prime could still continue to use the middle company to manage the contract. But the middle companies would not be included in our contract. The techs conrtact with the prime sets the rates, but they can continue to seperately pay the middle companies for admin work. Your paycheck would come straight from the prime, but the middle man company could be responsible for handing out the checks.
Middleman company would QC job. If it fails they send failed QC paper work to prime. Prime charges back installer. Hopefully the contract would give you the right to dispute the chargebacks or any grading system in place, to ensure you are not fired because of numbers which dont alway tell the whole truth. But if you get 4 warranted chargebacks in a year it could be grounds for termination.
Things would pretty much work the same, you just get 2 seperate pipe lines for the money to flow, and not 1. It also lets the techs bargaing a contract with someone who is in more of a position to raise the rates. Middleman companies have very little control of what they can pay. So I say eliminate them out of our equation. Seperate the pay of those who perform the work, from those who manage the work.
Re: More On Unions
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