Steve Cooper Posts

According to Karl Bode of DSLReports, telecommunications giant Verizon is consciously killing off its DSL market share in order to kill off its unionized labor force and eventually raise prices.

Since April, when Verizon stopped selling DSL-only service thus forcing customers to purchase bundle deals that include costly and unnecessary landlines, it has had a clear mission of forcing rural users to opt for LTE while killing off copper in any market it can:

“Every place we have FiOS, we are going to kill the copper,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam recently told attendees of an investor conference. “We are going to just take it out of service. Areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we have got LTE built that will handle all of those services and so we are going to cut the copper off there.”

Why would Verizon knowingly push customers to its competitors? Since the FCC began to authorize its $3.8 billion agreement with the cable industry, Verizon has relaxed the landline front, where a majority of its union workforce resides, and pushed on with the high overhead of building its LTE network. The deal has drawn the inquisitive eyes of the Department of Justice (DOJ) which is concerned with the anti-competitive ramifications of such an agreement:

The Justice Department is skeptical about the marketing deals since they would mean collaboration between Verizon, the largest wireless company, and Comcast, the biggest cable company, according to one of the sources. The fear is that there will be less head-to-head competition which could mean higher Internet and wireless plan prices.

The hope had been that Verizon would use its FiOS service to more aggressively push into Internet and cable, and that Comcast and other companies would compete more heavily in wireless products. “They’re a problem,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, about the marketing agreements.

American union workers in the landline division are facing the prospect of seeing their union effectively busted through technological gamesmanship while the American public will be forced to pay more for less. And the plan to kill DSL is already working according to Verizon’s quarterly earnings. In the second quarter Verizon added a record 3.2 million LTE users in comparison to the 2,000 broadband customers it added.

Rural Americans are likely to be unhappy with the endgame of these decisions as they could face the possibility of being left without proper Internet access.

Rural areas could see the biggest impact from the shift, as Verizon pulls DSL and instead sells those users LTE services with at a high price point ($15 per gigabyte overages). Verizon then hopes to sell those users cap-gobbling video services via their upcoming Redbox streaming video joint venture. Expect there to be plenty of gaps where rural users suddenly lose landline and DSL connectivity but can’t get LTE. With Verizon and AT&T having killed off regulatory oversight in most states — you can expect nothing to be done about it, despite both companies having been given billions in subsidies over the years to get those users online.

When the news of the Labor Department’s punishment of C.J.’s Seafood broke last night, my first reaction was to question the stringency of the fines. Just $34,000!? And $214,000 for wage and hour violations? This from the company that got exposed for treating H-2B guest workers to 24-hour shifts and lock-ins? But, it turns out that these numbers are actually quite substantial according to Sonia Ramirez, Deputy Director of Government Affairs for the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO:

Non-willful violations have fees around $1000 in the H2A agricultural guest worker program, and OSHA is often worse. A violation that causes a “substantial probability of death — or serious physical harm” brings a maximum penalty of only $7,000. Willful and repeated violations carry a maximum penalty of only $70,000 and willful violations a minimum of $5,000.

These punitive shortcomings demonstrate how little labor at large — and the health and safety of workers, more specifically — is valued. Onlookers, however, seem to display more sympathy on the issue. Nearly 150,000 people signed a petition supporting C.J.’s workers last month.

According to the New York Times, “the company owed $76,608 in back pay to 73 workers for paying less than the minimum wage, not paying overtime for working more than 40 hours a week, and illegally deducting wages for items required to do the job, including gloves, hairnets and aprons.”

To read more about recent Congressional activity that blocked necessary reforms to guest worker programs, read this.

A report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) has been making the electronic rounds big-time this week. NELP finds that large, highly profitable corporations mostly employ low-wage workers in America. Seems like stating the obvious, but every awful truth needs some science behind it, right?

The report is lending (even more) credence to the argument that it is time for a raise in the federal minimum wage.

Apparently, popular belief is that low-wage workers are often employed by small, mom-n-pop stores which can’t afford a raise in the federal minimum wage. This makes me go “hmmmmm” to say the least. NELP felt the same and found that nearly two-thirds of low-wage workers are employed by companies with over 100 employees. What’s worse is that these mega-companies have been seemingly unscathed by the recession, are posting record profits, but still hammer workers with the minimum wage:

Of the 50 largest employers of low-wage workers, more than 90 percent were profitable last year, and three-quarters of them are enjoying greater revenues than they did before the recession, the authors note, suggesting that such corporations could withstand a raise in the minimum wage.

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama pledged to increase the minimum wage to $9.50 by the end of 2011 yet currently only Iowa’s Tom Harkin and Illinois’s Jessie Jackson, Jr. have bills in motion to increase the federal standard. According to NELP, if the minimum wage had remained pegged to inflation it would currently sit at nearly $10 an hour. Harkin’s bill proposes a raise to $9.80 while Jackson, Jr.’s evens it out at $10.

Most large employers of low-wage workers “are earning profits above their pre‐recession levels, and are sharing those profits generously with their top executives and shareholders,” the report states. “Taken together, these indicators show that the nation’s top low‐wage employers can readily afford to pay for a higher minimum wage for their lowest‐paid employees.”

“Contrary to what critics sometimes suggest, the majority of the impact of any increase in the minimum wage will therefore be felt by large companies and corporations rather than small mom‐and‐pop establishments,” the report states.

In the wake of the tragic theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the opportunity to get vocal on CNN‘s Piers Morgan Tonight in favor of stricter gun laws across the nation. Interestingly, his solution for tackling the problem places the honus on policemen and women.

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King has attempted repeatedly to tear down the Davis-Bacon Act which establishes the prevailing wage on public works projects. He has done so with multiple amendments and legislative actions which onlookers rarely hear or read about.

Murtaza Baxamusa, a PhD holder who works with the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council (SDBCTC) and an occasional contributor to We Party Patriots has been named “outstanding advocate” by the San Diego Housing Federation. Family Housing Corporation’s director of planning and development, Baxamusa was honored for his commitment to bettering affordable housing for the region’s workers:

A well-known figure to city councils, the San Diego Association of Governments and other government bodies, Baxamusa has frequently testified in favor of policies supportive of affordable housing. His work has been integral in opening and maintaining lines of communication between developers and labor, and he has worked tirelessly for the causes of fairness in wages and benefits, fair land use and redevelopment policies, and increasing resources available for affordable housing units.

For over two decades the Family Housing Corporation has supported the development of affordable housing and their neighborhoods. The organization looks to educate people and break the cycle of poverty:

The Family Housing Corporation’s flagship project, the National City Park Apartments, provides a home to more than 700 adults and 1,000 children. They not only live in a stable, secure and affordable environment, but also take advantage of numerous educational and job training programs, including on-site pre-elementary child care and a learning center developed in cooperation with Sweetwater Union High School District’s Alternative Education Department.

One of our most innovative programs is a partnership with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council. Youth Build is a program for young adults aged 18-24 without a diploma, and it allows those with a GED an opportunity to have a traditional diploma. The program combines classroom instruction with job site training, and provides tools, safety equipment, uniforms and work boots, as well as certification in safety, first aid and CPR. Past Youth Build enrollees have constructed a greenhouse and hydroponic tables for Crawford High School’s Garden Club, while current participants are renovating the Olivewood Community Center, a 100-year-old structure next to the Park Apartments.

Congratulations to Baxamusa for all of his hard work. Here is a full list of San Diego Housing Federation Award winners:

Housing Project of the Year— More Than 50 Units

· Richard Lawrence, Affordable Housing Coalition

Recently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did what no diplomat had done before: she visited her 100th country, breaking Madeleine Albright’s record of 98: Since taking over the role in 2009, Clinton has spent 351 days traveling. She visited 102 different countries and has flown 843,839 miles according to the State Department. Some other secretaries

A week ago, the Boston Globe published an imbalanced piece that, for the most part, borrowed anti-Project Labor Agreement talking points from the Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC), a staunchly anti-union group. We took to Twitter to try to drum up some noise on the matter because false claims on “less sexy” topics need to

A bit of good news that might otherwise go unreported… Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King has attempted repeatedly to tear down the Davis-Bacon act which establishes the prevailing wage on public works projects. He has done so with multiple amendments and legislative actions which onlookers rarely hear or read about. Luckily for workers, the anti-Davis-Bacon