Right Now In The People’s Republic Of Comcast: The House Always Wins
>>> Good day, fellow Comcasto-serfs. As you go about your daily toil, it may behoove you to know that Your Fearless Leaders are crushing the shit out of Verizon/Fios. You know how they say, “This is Fios, this is big?” Well, 13,000 laid off is pretty goddamned big, too. True, the layoffs have more to do with the endangered species that is the land line, but even so, this is, well, bigger than Fios. In fact, it’s bigger than all of us, baby. [Bloomberg]
>>> So why not relent? You know you love Daddy ‘Cast anyways. [WaPo]
>>> And finally, guess who figured out a way to piggyback onto the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger? That’s right, Comcast! We have no idea how or why, but there it is. Somebody cue up “Hail To The Chief,” wouldja? [PBJ]
January 26th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
One of my oldest and best friends in the world works for Verizon management. These layoffs do indeed have to do with that dinosaur, the land-line, and all that service her. Verizon wants to get rid of it’s copper wire based network like a Senator wants to get rid of his drug addicted mistress before election time. This is a company that’s been eating itself for a long time, operating it’s land-line division in the red for years, but the wireless portion of the company has been so wildly successful that it was able to do so. With the downturn, the wireless division saw its first signs that the money spigot wasn’t always going to be turned on full blast and so the first thing to get the axe is the thing that costs them revenue.
According to my friend, Verizon has been shitting on management and union employees alike thereby giving nobody a reason to do their job the way they should. With no incentives and no future, everybody there has been fucking off for years. The higher-ups have come out and said flatly that they want guys like my friend to manage the failure while it happens, basically until they manage themselves out of a job. As for my buddy… he is taking a severance package, while there is still one to be had, and getting out now. His dad worked on the lines for Ma Bell and made a career out of it until he retired. All my friend ever wanted was to work for a company where he could do the same and provide for his wife and kids the way his dad did for his family. It’s sad when companies bring in CEOs that make hundreds of millions of dollars for making a company profitable for shareholders at the expense of providing employees with job security and a reason to care about the businesses they work for (and this is rampant in corporate america as evidenced by how many people are working as temps… if their job hasn’t been outsourced altogether). It’s just the nature of the capitalist animal… I guess.
I last spoke to my buddy a couple days ago. He’s taking up welding.