Bart185:



I'm no techno-whiz and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but SBC and the bulk of its business and therfore most of the union jobs you are striking to protect are analagous to the buggy whip manufacturing stage of the automobile industry. Your career at SBC might span the decline and then again, it might not. I don't know what you do, but I urge you to take advantage of any re-training opportunities available and to consider other job options in the future if they become available.



Here's a blurb about some of the reasons for the strike:



Quote
The union said that ''considerable progress'' has been made on the issue of its members getting access to the fast-growing sectors, which includes Internet support, wireless data and fiber-optics installation. However, the union is also pushing SBC to agree that CWA workers in fields with declining manpower needs be given priority for positions in their hometown.



The company says it will give each surplused worker a guaranteed job offer somewhere in the same state, which is an offer the CWA finds inadequate.



''With that, you might have to move your family many hundreds of miles for a lesser job with less pay,'' said union spokeswoman Candice Johnson. ''That's something that we're fighting to protect.''




As I read this, among other issues, you are fighting to protect jobs in the hometown for people that may not be qualified to hold them, so that they won't have to move to maintain their union job with SBC. You and your fellow union members had better hope that SBC surviveslong term and throwing road blocks in the path of efficiency is not helpful. Does anyone who is not a union member wonder why SBC is using non-union labor in the faster growing segments of the telephony industry? Could it be because non-union labor can be restructured without strikes or long drawn out negotiations?



In short, the union is helping to weaken the golden goose that is already getting too old to lay those eggs. Maybe your fellow worker who crossed the picket line has thought these issues out more than most of his other union members.

"When we put [our enlisted men and women] in harm's way, it had better count for something. It can't be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn't thought out." General Zinni on Iraq