Unauthorised Access UK 0636-708063 10pm-7am 12oo/24oo |+|+|+|+|[%> Bell Walk-out <%]|+|+|+|+| + + | by: kid & company | + + |+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+| Contract talks were breaking down between American Telephone and Telegraph and three major unions of their employees. As a result, workers walked off the ir jobs at midnight on August 7th. The AT&T strike was on! We all remember the phone strike of '83. It caused us to hold on directory assistance for several minutes. It gave us many unique error messages. It made it virtually impossible to make any operator-assisted calls from all around the country. For the first time in along while, the voices at AT&T were not answe ring the phone. As well all know, a strike is an organized work stoppage by the employees in order to compel the employer to meet some demand. If the workers go on strik e, it stands to reason that the company should suffer. If, for example, the uni on of Cabbage-Patch producers was to strike, then none would be made, and consu mers would rant and rave. If the local Cabbage-Patch conglomerate had anticipat ed a strike, they could step up production, fill several hundred ware houses wi th millions of surrogate orphans and, when the strike occurred, they could sell the surplus. The workers would lose their bargaining power in this case, unles s the Cabbage-Patch truckers' union also struck, or perhaps people stopped adop ting the cretins, however unlikely that might seem. This analogy leads us back to last summer when 675,000 telephone employees went on strike. A walk-out of the magnitude should have devastated any company . AT&T though, is the exception to the rule. What AT&T depends on are phones, w ires, switching systems, computers, electrictiy, some optical fibers, satellite s, microwave towers, and other nifty 21st century things that are all designed to run without the interference of human decision. The people are really just t here to remove illegal third party phone calls from your bill, to make sure tha t your handwritten check matches the computer-read phone bill, or to tell you t hat the machine you are at cannot return your dime and that you will get a chec k for 10 cents in the mail. 97% of the calls made today don't use any operator assistance at all. And most of the other 3% could have been dialed without the assistance of a human. More and more "services" of your phone company are becom ing completely automated. With ESS, customers can dial overseas direct. Android information is popping up left and right. AT&T, a leader in technology, doesn't need their workers all that much. Glen E. Watts, president of the Communications Workers of America, said, " In 1950, for example, total labor costs amounted to about 45% of the telephone dollar while in 1980 they amounted only to 29%." John Patrick Phillips (author of Ma Bell's Millions) says that the company encourages or even "maneuvers" a s trike. According to him, Ma Bell reaps huge rewards from a strike. Phillips, a disgruntled ex-employee, who at times compares the phone company to fascism, wo uld have presented AT&T's organized scheme last August like this: 675,000 workers strike for about 3 weeks. 3 weeks out of a year amounts to 5.8% of a worker's salary. Let's say a phone worker made at the time of the st rike a modest $250 per week (operators made $373, while systems technicians, th e best paid workers, made $535). At this time AT&T provided substandard service to the people for the same prices. The 3% loss in phone usage due to lack of operators was proably easily made up by people making an extra effort to dial direct and by the fact that so me of the calls were being handeled by scabbing supervisory level employees. An d so, the company nets pure profit: 3 week strike x $250/week x 675,000 workers = $506,250,000! Phillips also notes that because managers and supervisors were doing the d irty work of the phone company, these people could not work on new projects. Th is means that several hundred million dollars would not be invested in expendit ures on new projects because there is no one to do the work. So AT&T would get interest on this money during the strike and even for some time after it was se ttled until work had resumed. This yields several more million dollars in profi t for AT&T. AT&T proably made out directly over half a billion dollars for the strike. At the same time companys like New York Telephone sought to delay a $160 milli on rate increase so it could ask for another increase to reflect the new contra cts. As part of the settlement 21 days later, top craft workers got a 5.5% incr ease for the first year of their 3 year contract and 1.5% for each of the next two years. They also got a $31 million training fund ($46 per employee) to help them deal with new technology and remain employable humans. All of these "gain s" are subsidized by the half a billion dollars gaining lots of interest which AT&T did not have to pay to their employees. AT&T at first offered a ridiculous 3.5% increase for the first year and no increase for the next two, but after l osing 5.8% of their salary by striking, workers got a 5.5% increase above the c ost of living which is probably entirely subsidized by the strike itself and by rate increases. It's certainly a nifty deal for Ma Bell. Their workers blow off steam and pay for their own raises, and stockholders don't have to worry one bit. The strike had its effect on the consumer. As we all know, many were diali ng, touchtoning, or redialing their calls almost like usual and other were seve rely inconvenienced by a few managers and supervisors working as long distance or directory assistance operators often for many hours overtime. New installati ons came to a standstill and many were backlogged for several months. Any emerg ency repairs had to be handled by supervisory personnel. But after all this, th e same fat phone bill came to people's homes the next month, without any delay. In actuality, users cannot complain to or boycott the phone company as the y could the Cabbage-Patch manufacturers, in our earlier scenario. They cannot m ake AT&T or their local company do anything because each customer is as unimpor tant as each employee. We, as customers, are all dependent on the phone. We hav e at least one in each home. We are billed if we use it or not, and are billed more to have it shut off for a month or two. We are all so dependent on the lin es that run into our homes and on the one and a half million payphones that abs orb our money that complaints of any one or even thosuands of us are quite usel ess. All of this utility (note the meaning of this word) was until recently cot rolled almost exclusively by one company, so in the name of human spirit, roll on with the divestiture. ---------------------------------------