If you want to why your Verizon Wireless bill is so expensive, you can blame greed reports a news release from VeriGreedy, representing the Communication Workers of America.
The group protested at Verizon's shareholders’ meeting in Huntsville. The group wants the communications giant to stop its assault on employees, customers, and American taxpayers. They are blaming the stall in union negotiations and jobs sent overseas on corporate greed.
Public pressure has had effects on large companies. The outrage and protests over Apple's iPhone/iPad factories in China have improved conditioned. The CWA is hoping that showing Verizon's policies as part of corporate greed, that they will get results.
The group claims that Verizon is
- Shipping jobs overseas.
- Verizon’s CEO makes $23 million per year. That’s over 600 times more than an average frontline worker makes
- The company’s greed is directly hitting consumers, workers, and taxpayers.
- Verizon customers now must pay a $30 fee for simply upgrading to a new phone, a charge that will bring Verizon another $1 billion a year.
- Dodges taxes and has sent thousands of American jobs overseas.
- Sdn’t pay a dime in federal corporate income taxes from 2008 to 2010. Over the past five years, Verizon’s tax rate has been just 8.5 percent.
- Workers represented by CWA have been bargaining for a fair contract for nearly a year, pushing back against the company’s demands to gut retirement security, health care, and other benefits for employees, retirees, and workers who get hurt on the job.
- Verizon, the 16th largest corporation in America, made $22.5 billion in profits over the past four years while paying its top five executives $283 million. It recently gave CEO Lowell McAdam a big increase in compensation to $23.1 million a year.
- The company still wants to eliminate pensions, force workers to pay thousands of dollars more for health care, slash sick time and eliminate job security.
To group suggests that to protest, can call Verizon Wireless, Tweet about your concerns and protest at stores.
Frontier Communications will terminate 3 percent of its work force in Pennsylvania and blamed the unions. In West Virginia Frontier purchased Verizon’s land line and the union wants Frontier (legacy) employees who make $6 per hour less than Verizon employees to have parity. While CEO Maggie Wilderotter seeks to destroy the unions, her total compensation jumped from $4.8 million to $8.6 million in 2010. The Communications Workers of America claim that Frontier is rewarding its top executives -- to the tune of $2 million in bonuses -- but snubbing rank-and-file employees (Eyre, 2011).
In the five fiscal years through 2006, CEO of Verizon Ivan Seidenberg received over $114 million in compensation, while total shareholder return was a negative 5 percent. In 2008 he received $20.2 million, as Verizon’s stock fell 20 percent. Verizon’s second-quarter profit fell 21 percent and the company terminated more than 8,000 employee and contractor jobs in July 2009 and another 8,000 in December 2009. In 2010 Seidenberg terminated another 13,000 employees (Ellis, 2010). He received compensation in fiscal 2009 valued at $17.5 million as its net profit fell 18 percent to $10.36 billion, or $1.29 per share. He is so hated by his union employees that they call him “Ivan the Terrible.” Forbes ranks http://current.com/1crit4c Seidenberg’s efficiency at 184 on their pay/performance score, and the worse a CEO can get is 189. So what did he get in 2010? A 4 percent raise to $18.1 million which included a 33 percent increase in his bonus to $3.9 million. In August 2011, Seidenberg resigned a very rich man. He was replaced by Lowell McAdam, former chief of Verizon Wireless and current president of Verizon. Seidenberg will remain as chairman. Of course he will. In 2010 Verizon earned $11.9 billion in pre-tax profits in the United States and received a $705 million federal tax refund. Despite a $6.89 billion in profit the first six months of 2011, in August the company demanded that its union employees give up compensation of up to $20,000 per year per employee and the right to outsource even more jobs overseas, having already sent 25,000 out of the country. Meanwhile, the company's top executives collected $258 million in salaries and bonuses in the last four years (Durso, 2011).