http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/weekinreview/01STEV.html
What Do You Mean 'Us,' Boss? by Steven Greenhouse ....
Cara Alcantar, who accumulated 1,600 stock options in her four years at WorldCom, said she was naïve to identify with WorldCom's chief executive. "I felt on the same side as Bernie Ebbers, on the cutting edge of technology," she said. "I worked extremely hard, and I couldn't imagine layoffs would ever happen to me.'
But on July 3, she was laid off. Now her stock options are worthless, WorldCom says it cannot pay her severance benefits, and the half of her retirement savings that were in WorldCom stock are virtually worthless. "Not only were they not looking out for our interests," Ms. Alcantar said, "they were so greedy they made sure the money went into their pockets."
Before, she said, joining a union had never crossed her mind, but now she says she wishes WorldCom were unionized. With a union, she says, she might have had a defined-benefit pension that, unlike her vaporized 401(k) plan, would have guaranteed her benefits even after the stock market plunged. Labor leaders say that if Enron or WorldCom were unionized, unions would have won better pensions and severance benefits for the workers and, through their prying, might have forced the companies to be more honest about their books.
"We're seeing a real waking up across the nation because millions of workers are seeing that their economic futures are far less secure than they had been led to believe," said Harley Shaiken, a specialist in labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley. ....