Why strike?

Why strike?

50 years ago, strikes were important
there 470 strikes in 1952

just last year there were only 50 strikes of more than 1000 employees

there is a better way to assist in change for us and for the union. i believe the media is our best form of leverage in changing what we want at our jobs.

we all know what is going wrong at ATT . why not blow the whistle on them?

now is the time to use what you find against a company.

there is so much that the public is unaware of. things that they might want to know.


say the 5000 jobs that were brought back to America. ATT created jobs in new call centers and then PURCHASED the contract call centers in India!

think about it. they now own the centers in India and can do what they want.
instead of the customers getting Prahad and Bhagavad for DSL support questions they now get Dick and Susie from Wisconsin. The downside to this is now the internal customer, read: employees can now spend countless non-productive ours at work attempting to garner assistance for their computer and technical issues.

for example, i have had a phone down at my desk since about the 14th of March. we no longer have a number to call first to expedite assistance with work related technical issues, we have to go online and create a ticket number.

that ticket is funneled through Georgia and most likely ends up in Madhapur India where mine did. I post no ill will to the workers in India. they need jobs too, but training is very important when dealing with company infrastructure.

I have a soft phone or what most people would call VOIP at my desk. one down side to it is that it is not VOIP but instead a soft phone that uses an ISDN circuit. this leads to many problems. instead of all of the system being virtual, most of it is.

technical assistance is only offered for the virtual phone. I knew after changing out equipment, doing downloads, updating, installing and uninstalling etc, that it was a physical problem that needed a telephone technician to repair.

I would figure that i know this because i know a little about phones as i work for the phone company. meh!

still i prescribed to the company idea that that trouble ticket i opened would eventually be turned into a work order and a tech would come out.

i got an email message on Wednesday from a 'tech' saying he would be at my desk.
it was the company computer guy. he did an un-install, install, update yada yada yada. i think you get the picture. before he even sat down, he knew that he was not going to be able to help. obviously, he had been here done this' before.

he still took his 25 minutes assigned to prove out the program issue.

1 down... how many more to go?

he closed my ticket.
there would be no other person coming out.
i now had to create another ticket.
i got to Georgia this time. that is Georgia in the US and not Georgia in the Ukraine :)
i sat at my desk and had them access my computer remotely to download a new push into the equipment that i had already changed out and tested at another station and had proved out that it wasn't the equipment.
she did her best. i thanked her proficiently, she said she would watch the ticket closely and the then she referred it back to the company computer guy.

he got a message from me that said "don't bother to come out. enjoy your lunch"

it was at this time that i tried to take a familiar path.
i called REPAIR!!!!!
me and the rep on the line had a good laugh. she knew she couldn't help me and i knew too, but i just had to vent to someone who actually understood the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

i told her that all i wanted was a warm body with a tool belt to come on down and fix my phone. the guy with the clipboard was wasting his time.

she laughed, i laughed . it was all good.

by now, Georgia had closed my ticket.
Hello again to limbo.
so my boss overhears me making the warm body and a tool belt comment and decides that it is time for him to step and an be more professional. hahahahaha
it was time to allow my manager to feel my pain.
i could not get an answer from him in the beginning, but somehow he felt that he could get things moving for me now.

i have never enjoyed a watching a man squirm as much as i did this day. hahahahaha!
i followed him to his office and watched him go through all the motions. he was not nice for long. i was sitting there waiting for his bells palsy to come back he was so stressed!
after he asked for a manager a couple of times and got his nose bit a couple of times, he tells me that he has a tech coming out on Monday.

stay tuned. ..






strike?
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Strike vs Lockout information from Wikepedia

A lockout is a work stoppage in which an employer prevents employees from working. This is different from a strike, in which employees refuse to work.

A lockout may happen for several reasons. When only part of a trade union votes to strike, the purpose of a lockout is to put pressure on a union by reducing the number of members who are able to work. For example, if a group of the workers strike so that the work of the rest of the workers becomes impossible or less productive, the employer may declare a lockout until the workers end the strike.

Another case in which an employer may impose a lockout is to avoid slowdowns or intermittent work-stoppages. Occupation of factories has been the traditional method of response to lock-outs by the workers' movement.

Other times, particularly in the United States, a lockout occurs when union membership rejects the company's last and final offer at negotiations and offers to return to work under the same conditions of employment as existed under the now expired contract. In such a case, the lockout is designed to pressure the workers into accepting the terms of the company's last offer.

The term lockin refers to the practice of physically preventing workers from leaving a workplace. In most jurisdictions this is illegal but is occasionally reported, especially in some developing countries.

In the United States, under Federal labor law, an employer may only hire temporary replacements during a lockout. In a strike, unless it is an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike, an employer may legally hire permanent replacements. Also, in many U.S. states, employees who are locked-out are eligible to receive unemployment benefits, but are not eligible for such benefits during a strike.^{[citation needed]}

For the above reasons, many American employers have historically been reluctant to impose lockouts, instead attempting to provoke a strike. However, as American unions have increasingly begun to resort to slowdowns rather than strikes, lockouts have come "back in fashion" for many employers, and even as incident of strikes are on the decline, incidents of lockouts are on the rise in the U.S.^{[citation needed]}

Recent notable lockout incidents have been reported in professional sports, notably involving the National Basketball Association in the 1998–99 season the National Hockey League in the 1994–95 and 2004–05 seasons.

The NLRB National Labor Relations Board has the authority to investigate and remedy unfair labor practices, which are defined in Section 8 of the Act. In broad terms, the NLRA National Labor Relations Act makes it unlawful for an employer to:

• interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights to engage in protected concerted activity or union activities or refrain from them (concerted activity is any activity where two or more employees act in concert to protect rights provided for in the Act, whether or not a union exists),
• to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of a labor organization
• to discriminate against employees for engaging in concerted or union activities or refraining from them,
• to discriminate against an employee for filing charges with the NLRB or taking part in any NLRB proceedings
• to refuse to bargain with the union that is the lawful representative of its employees.

The Act similarly bars unions from:

• restraining or coercing employees in the exercise of their rights or an employer in the choice of its bargaining representative
• causing an employer to discriminate against an employee,
• refusing to bargain with the employer of the employees it represents
• engaging in certain types of secondary boycotts
• requiring excessive dues
• engaging in featherbedding
• picketing for recognition for more than thirty days without petitioning for an election,
• entering into "hot cargo" agreements
• striking or picketing a health care establishment without giving the required notice.

Applying this general language to the real world requires, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, "distinctions more nice than obvious". The substantive law applied by the NLRB is described elsewhere under specific headings devoted to particular topics.

Not every unfair act amounts to an unfair labor practice; as an example, failing to pay an individual worker overtime pay for hours worked in excess of forty hours in a week might be a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, but it is unlikely to amount to an unfair labor practice as well. Similarly, a violation of a collective bargaining agreement, standing alone, may not constitute an unfair labor practice unless the employer has not only violated the contract but repudiated all or part of it.

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how can they get away with this?

is it going to be possible for us to report ways that corporations are shuffling their structure around to appear to be helping the american public.

i work for ATT and they promised to bring back 5000 american jobs from overseas. what they did was switch the customer facing foreign workers with the internal workers. Now the employees calling internally are getting all of the representatives from overseas. for example, my desk phone has been broken for over 5 days. i could only send an email to report trouble. i had to wait a number of days for a response and my response came from a internal repair rep in madhupar india!!! he could not help me and i am still waiting for a message to be passed to the technician who walks the halls of the building i work in. i have found that it is next to impossible to ask for change from a company that does not want to change. the change should be expected and demanded by our goverment. more regulatioin for how employees are managed. we have full departments that are laden in red tape and beuracracy to manage the consumers protection, but somewhere employees have been left out. unions are not doing what they can because they have no support and big business is almost impossible to fight without that help.
thank you for your time.





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Where is the line with you...

OMG! I think there must be a fantastic new driving school for not-so-brights, the inbred and crackheads!

At least once a week this car parks in front of my house and leaves it's ass partially blocking my driveway.

I am not sure what imaginary garbage can might be sitting out there 4 days early for pickup, but I wish they would just imagine they are bumping it and pull up a little further. Maybe they are parking in front of my house because of all the imaginary cars in front of the one across the street.

Granted, they only parked there for 15 or so minutes but Damn! I was trying to leave my house!!!

I need smarter neighbors. Anyone know where I can buy a few freeze dried - like Sea Monkeys? Add water and "POP"...

Happy Ramblings

Goddess
L. Gracie Phillips