Firstly, I’ve never understood the purpose of a Union.  This stupidity between the Communication Workers of America and Verizon has pushed me over the edge to a level of rage I never thought I could attain.  The more I think about it, the more it enrages me.  If I understand correctly, a Union is passed off as an organization that protects the American Worker.  What a load of crap!  Here’s why I say that:

Tuesday August 9th at 9am EST, all of the 757 area code dropped for internet access for those using connectivity with Verizon.  It turns out that this outage may have been on purpose and was not the only outage on the east coast.  For nearly 12 hours, I get back to back angry phone calls because my small internet service that I work for, uses Verizon to deliver last mile connectivity to the majority of our customers.  Home and Business customers alike.  As if taking calls from the socially inept isn’t bad enough because they can’t get on with their lives without Facebook or Twitter; I’ve also have business customers, who don’t have redundancy (for whatever reason they chose not too) and depend on the internet to take orders and payments crawling up my behind as if it’s somehow my fault they can’t get online.

So now I’m thinking that if this in fact was on purpose, to somehow urge Verizon to give in to a deal with the CWA because they now need the workers to restore connectivity…  How childish can they be?  Interrupting services to millions of customers causing them to cancel service with Verizon (and worse, small businesses like the one I work for as well), causing absolute mayhem to thousands of “American Workers” both in my business and the others that were affected by this outage.

So what a Union really does apparently, is protect the Union Member and screws the “American Worker” over.  Because I can’t honestly see how they intend to make any headway if they do things like drive customers away from Verizon.  This simply means there won’t be any work for the CWA Union Members to return too.  Even if they didn’t cause the outages, all they are doing is delaying any trouble tickets we open for customers that are disconnected from the Verizon service for whatever reason.  (ie. Cable Cuts, Cross Connect, etc…)  So there is little to no one to work these tickets.  Causing the same effect when we have to tell customers, “I’m sorry, but Verizon is on strike.  There is no one to correct your issue.”.

Further more, in an economy where I know I’m thankful to even have a full time job.  Verizon employees are crying about not getting paid enough or don’t have enough benefits.  I’ve even heard one Verizon tech tell a co-worker of mine, “I’m on vacation.”, referring to the current strike.  What a bunch of bologna!  I’m struggling to keep customers happy on my current wage praying that I don’t get laid off because customers are leaving in anger over something I have no control over.  While Verizon techs are “on vacation” while waiting for their pathetic demands to be met.