On Sat, 15 Jun 2002 at 7:40am Nathan Newman wrote:
> What ignorant uninformed peanut gallery analysis.
>
> Given that CWA changed its position,. have you even
> thought that maybe CWA extracted pro-worker concessions
> based on their previous campaign against the merger?
-Just as long as you acknowledge that this is in CWA -members' and Management's interests, not that it is in any -way a victory for progressives or consumers.
So why are the interests of "consumers" more progressive than the interests of union workers? And by the way, I think the CWA position is in the interests of consumers as well, a position shared by a bunch of representatives of poor and rural districts who are less interested in the middle-class tech concerns of opponents and more in getting broadband deployment in the first place to their constituents.
> As for Breaux-Nickles, current law encourages non-union
> ISPs to take union jobs away from union Bell companies,
> while putting no interconnection burdens on largel
> non-union cable companies in the broadband sector.
-Hah, hah -- yer a funny guy! The RBOC's have been driving -the CLEC's to bankruptcy with their monopolistic, foot -dragging on opening up their networks.
No one knows what the hell that sentence means, unless they are embedded in the intermural corporate battles involved.
And if the Baby Bell unionized workers have won out over the non-union financial speculator competitors, I say hurrah.
> This is one of the only unions that has made headway into the expanding
> unionization into the technology sector and you sit pissing on them?
-Look: I am not one of these libertarian droolers saying Gov -Bad! Unions Bad...I've had very good experience working with -the Union technicians at SBC. They are usually better -trained and better informed than their non-union couterparts -in my experience.
And SBC, based in Texas, is the most pro-union telephone company in the country.
-But the RBOC's have been godawfully anti-competitive and -have been fucking consumers over. The CWA probably did what -was best for their membership, but it is not in the best -interests of consumers or and sort of 'progressive' agenda.
I happen to have Comcast for my high-speed Internet. I was royally fucked over for weeks by the failure of Excite at Home, a nonunion company. The Bells had nothing to do with Excite's failure. The problems in the broadband industry have little to do with the Bells and I frankly don't see the Bells as the major source of consumers getting screwed.
Me-- I miss big bad Ma Bell, which benefitted consumers tremendously for decades. Productivity was high, prices fell continuously and the poorest customers benefitted most clearly. Competition has brought few benefits.
So given the complete lack of evidence of any benefits from competition, I will hail the expansion of union jobs as a progressive gain.
-- Nathan Newman