"It s very hard to retire here," a Cablevision installer complained to the New York Times earlier this month. "You get hurt, you can t work as hard and you disappear." A little more than a week later, despite claims from unions that Cablevision tried heavy-handedly to stop it, 282 technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn have voted to join the CWA. The move marks the first time that Cablevision employees have unionized, in a cable sector where just 2% to 4% of cable TV workers are unionized. That's compared to 90% of telecommunications workers, most notably Cablevision's primary competitor, Verizon.
Cablevision issued a statement noting disappointment:
"We are disappointed by the outcome of this vote. In the worst economy in memory, Cablevision has not laid off a single technician, unlike our competitors who have cut thousands of unionized positions. In fact, Cablevision has created jobs. We value our employees and the work they do and believe the CWA has little to offer them. We are assessing our options."
Cablevision workers make about one-third less than their counterparts at Verizon, according to the CWA. As we recently noted, there are some on Wall Street who'd like to see Verizon get out of landline entirely in large part because of union costs, instead fully focusing on wireless where labor remains ununionized and therefore pension, health and other costs are reduced.read comment(s)