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Reuters reports:
About 37,000 AT&T Inc (T.N) workers, or less than 14 percent of the company's total workforce, began a three-day strike on Friday after failing to reach an agreement with the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier over new contracts.
This is the first time that AT&T wireless workers are on strike, which could result in closed retail stores during the weekend, according to the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union. The workers on strike are members of the CWA.
The workers are demanding wage increases that cover rising healthcare costs, job security against outsourcing, affordable healthcare and a fair scheduling policy.
Other coverage at UCOMM Communications Blog and The New York Times
Previously on SoylentNews: Largest Labor Action in 5 Years Slated for Wednesday, April 13 Against Verizon
[Ed. Note: This story was rewritten with a different source because the original story substantially altered the quoted material and contained a longer off-topic text than the section quoted. As always, the original submission is available at the link below.]
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday May 22 2017, @01:29AM (1 child)
If someone does, I will not be offended. As matter of fact, I support that idea, being born into it. But I also know firsthand most of its very fundamental limitations. The problem is that Communism is possible in a very small group of like-minded people who cooperate, but as soon as the group becomes larger, the tradedy of commons strikes, and everyone starts looking for their own, personal advantage. So far, that's how the world works. But you can definitely have communes on small scale. The key here is the freedom of association - you are part of the group while you want it *and* while [almost] all others want you. Freedom of association was mostly nonexistent in USSR, except in some work teams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:45AM
We can quickly run into semantics with entities calling themselves one thing and actually being another thing.
Democracy in the Workplace (Socialism) can and does indeed work.
There are thousands of such workplaces in northern Italy, some of them of being of significant size.
USA is a relative newbie at this but there are hundreds of worker-owned cooperatives here.
I don't doubt that, with the diversity of human experiences, there are also examples of power plays and selfishness that can't be resolved.
OTOH, Mondragon has over 100,00 worker-owners, so it can scale up very well.
Moving on to "Communism", I see that as a broader phenomenon where folks who are already practicing Democracy in the Workplace in many, many workplaces apply an organized political effort to bringing natural monopolies (electricity, transit, internet) under collective ownership of all the people in the affected region, replacing Capitalist ownership, with this accomplished via direct competition or eminent domain buyouts of existing businesses, with this having strong worker/voter control.
As such, "Communism" is -always- a large-scale thing.
I see it as having a the-most-good-for-the-greatest-number-of-people nature as Liberal Democracy *should*, but with a tighter and more specific feedback loop.
...and, of course, if you have some gov't guy sent from the capital city/county seat to tell everybody how stuff is going to be done (top-down), "Socialism" and "Communism" stop being accurate callouts for what you have.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]