A reason why we CANNOT agree to any offer right now.

My staff and I plan to use these messages as a way to directly communicate about important issues and opportunities, and today I have some encouraging updates about health care reform.

The Vice President and I just met with leaders from the House of Representatives and received their commitment to pass a comprehensive health care reform bill by July 31.

We also have an unprecedented commitment from health care industry leaders, many of whom opposed health reform in the past. Monday, I met with some of these health care stakeholders, and they pledged to do their part to reduce the health care spending growth rate, saving more than two trillion dollars over the next ten years -- around $2,500 for each American family. Then on Tuesday, leaders from some of America's top companies came to the White House to showcase innovative ways to reduce health care costs by improving the health of their workers.

Now the House and Senate are beginning a critical debate that will determine the health of our nation's economy and its families. This process should be transparent and inclusive and its product must drive down costs, assure quality and affordable health care for everyone, and guarantee all of us a choice of doctors and plans.

Reforming health care should also involve you. Think of other people who may want to stay up to date on health care reform and other national issues and tell them to join us here:



Health care reform can't come soon enough. We spend more on health care than any country, but families continue to struggle with skyrocketing premiums and nearly 46 million are without insurance entirely. It is a priority for the American people and a pillar of the new foundation we are seeking to build for our economy.

We'll continue to keep you posted about this and other important issues.

Thank you,
Barack Obama

P.S. If you'd like to get more in-depth information about health reform and how you can participate, be sure to visit .

Goddess

The "Recession"

Let me give you a little meat and potatoes on what folks keep calling a "recession".
We are not in a recession folks. We are in a DEPRESSION.
Times are so bad now that when you see folks dropping off their children at school and they have a bunch of furniture loaded into the back of their truck that child is not going home at the end of the day.

People are out of food.

Senior Citizens cannot afford their oil for heat or their prescriptions.

This, my people, is a DEPRESSION.
Where people are walking away from their homes because there is no money in the banks to help them refinance and make their payments lower or more manageable.

Can you smell a Depression here?
This depression is different than the last depression we had in the 30s. This is a modern depression. We still have the technological advancements that make it seem like we are just having a downturn in the economy, but being one of lower middle class folks, I know times are hard. We have the "things" that make us feel we have been successful so we feel safe. Internet, Wi-Fi and Cable TV does not a safe economy make.

Bernanke decides that we are going to come out of this recession near the end of '09. WTF???? No way. Businesses may come out of the recession, but the people who all lost their jobs and the families that are now living in cars and shelters because of downsizing will not recover by the end of '09.

We, my people, are in a Depression.

I do not foresee a recovery for the working stiff for the next 3 years.
How can Bernanke even open his mouth and talk about business recovering (the same folks that got us here in the first place) and not speak about and to the people and about OUR recovery. The only person who has been speaking about a recovery for the people and not the businesses has bee our President and we all know he doesn't have a lot of friends in Congress. Everyone seems to be thinking only of the big businesses and worry that anything that will help the people spells increasing taxes for business. I say so what! It is time you pay for dragging us down with you. Please remember, that we did loan you the money to get out of the hole you dug.

I am a patient woman most of the time and I have tried to be patient about this, but now is the time for us to help ourselves. It seems that most of government is not on our side and only on the side of their wallets and bank accounts.

Lord help us. We will pull through because we have been in this bad situation for quite some time but we have to do it together.

Just like most grass roots activists say. Talk to the people what don't want to listen and then talk to to the people who will listen and will put a bug in the ear of the folks who don't.

They need to be reminded that there are people down here. The people they call their constituents. the same people on whose backs they are standing on . The same people on whose shoulders they leave their political mud on who need help now. Not later.

Change is good.
Don't run from it.


Goddess




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Technical snag but i still support my union.

WOW! I have to try not to be pissed when I sit here unable to sign on to the union meeting that is being held online. grrrrrr

something tells me that I am just going to have to wait and watch a recorded version of the biggest union meeting in the history of the CWA union.

I registered, I waited for the instructions and I went to the site and logged on around the designated time and I am still hour glassing after 45 minutes.

hmmmmm. Did they do a test run? nah.

Today at work must have been the last straw for the management staff. They are on call and ready for anything and the company starts to refer to them as lesser employees by trying to get the union members to get their drift by telling us that what they are asking from us is far better than the shitty plan they stuck their managers with. Usually, you see comments on the company sites about union bargaining littered with messages from managers saying good things about the company. After they dogged out the managers two days in a row by mentioning that the health plan they have sucks rocks, they finally lashed out.

I was waiting for Big Brother to swoop down and wipe out the messages, but not today...I think the company computer guy must have gone on a vacation... or has stopped following the company rule of wipe-it-out-if-it's-not-towing-the-company-line.

Some of the comments really got me thinking about how management gets screwed and how we cannot be mean to them because part of their job requirement is to follow company policy and work during strike.

Does it make you anti-company if you don't subscribe to all of the company's policies?

Maybe it is time for the managers to consider walking out with us. Now that would stick it to the corporation. From what I understand, managers have a 2500 deductible which means that they have to see the doctor a total of 65 visits per year in order to have the company pick up the tab at that point. Some of the comments from the managers stated that the only cost savings they had from their medical plan was the small discount they got on each doctor visit price.
If there were to be any type of catastrophic illness a family would be wiped out by having to pay medical bills up front before the company would take over and pay their share.

I am very disappointed by ATT for the way they have put down their management staff as well as the core wire line persons who keep this business running even if we aren't making as much money for them as we used to.
What the union and the company need to do is come to an agreement that is fair for ALL employees.

Why not have the employees, managers and executives share the medical cost. I think that if they worked it out, it would balance out quite well.


Shame on ATT

I'll have a side of curry with my internet service

they want to screw us on eerything and this is what we get...
a new office in Dubai. what is up with ATT?

they know that they stand to make a lot more money by squeezing us out of existence.

"We opened our first office in Dubai in 2006 to meet the needs of our customers and since then have continued to build and consolidate our position in the region. In October 2007, John B. Gibson was appointed President, AT&T Middle East and Africa, leading our efforts in the region. This was followed in November 2008 by the appointment of Kevin Maher as regional vice president to focus on sales and support for our global enterprise customers in the region. The new office space is the next step in our progression in the Middle East region."


grrrrr r i say

what would I give up to have a contract RIGHT NOW!

what would i give up RIGHT NOW for a contract.

I would give up that paid FLMAwithout a doubt. They do need to back down on some stuff because some of them are still thinking like it is 1980. You can't always get what you want. The worst part is that they are ripping us off on the health care. There is no way to get them to hear what we are thinking. That is the problem.
If we speak out against the union, they point us out to be union crashers. So be it I say. I have no shame in telling them that they are asking for to much and fighting a fight that I don't think we can win on the backs of the employees.
The employees are stuck in the middle between the union and the corporation and the only folks who will suffer will be us.
I would love to get the jobs back to CA and the people who got screwed out of jobs a good deal too. We can handle not having more money. We just need to be able to take care of our health without having to file for bankruptcy.

Sometimes I feel like the union did not take enough time to hear how we felt and what we really wanted to fight about.
We got a survey out that gave us an opportunity to vote on what we were willing to strike for but we never got a return on that survey when it came time to authorize a strike. I would have felt more comfortable making a decision on something that might send me into bankruptcy court.

Was my decision to vote "no" appropriate? yes. Did it make a difference? Not to the union or the members who voted yes but doing the best and voting your conscience is the best that you can do.

I have enjoyed a wonderful Easter and hope that we don't have to go through the whole crucifiction thing again during negotiations.

g

Latest update: get your infor from your UNION

CWA District 9/AT&T WestBargaining Bulletin #29Thursday April 2, 20091 Union 1 Fight 1 FutureThis message is to clarify any confusion that may be out there about the Company report dated April 1. The report read “Proposals including wages, health care and pension have now been passed at all six regional bargaining tables.” In reference to “PASSED” in their message it simply means the proposals were passed across the table. Unfortunately we remain miles apart and haven’t been able to reach an agreement on these items. The CWA bargaining committee remains ready to meet for discussion on any of these topics. Any all factual information regarding bargaining will be in our reports.





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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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