1,000 Sprint Nextel workers on strike

2005/10/11 at 17:10:02 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (2) | Trackback URI
Read more: CWA, Sprint Nextel, Strike

About 1,000 Sprint Nextel employees walked off the job Monday in Hickory, N.C.; Bluff City, Tenn.; Evansville, Ind.; and Ocala, Fla.

“This is the most profitable segment of the entire company, yet Sprint is demanding contract concessions that amount to an attack on our paychecks, our families’ health security, our job conditions and our very future with the company,” said Jimmy Gurganus, Communications Workers of America vice president for telecommunications.

Gurganus said that CWA members at all four units have been bargaining with the company for months and are fighting not only for quality jobs but for quality service as Sprint, in the process of merging with Nextel, moves to spin off all of its local telephone operations, which serve 7.5 million customers in mostly rural areas.

Gurganus said that from 1998 to 2003, Sprint diverted $8.7 billion in earnings from local telephone lines to expand its wireless and data networks, neglecting maintenance and upgrades to local lines and failing to install high speed DSL service, which is unavailable in many areas served by Sprint.

Among the strike issues, Sprint wants to eliminate the cap on employee contributions to health premiums, which would allow management to shift up to 100 percent of its health costs to the workers. The company also wants to get rid of current limits on transferring work — and jobs — to outside contractors, eliminate its contributions to the employees’ 401(k) savings plan, slash both short-term and long-term disability benefits, eliminate overtime pay for Sunday work, cut back on paid leave for vacations, holidays and sick leave, and weaken workers’ seniority rights.

Sprint will have managers work 12 hour, 7 day shifts during the strike.

Sprint’s local phone unit has about 7.5 million local access lines in 18 states and generated $2.99 billion in operating revenue in the first six months of 2005.

7 Responses to 1,000 Sprint Nextel workers on strike

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5 Comments

Comment by B.H. | 2005/11/13 at 23:23:32

I was fired this year because of falsily accusted of disconnecting a call on a customer. The beginning of 2005 when I received my job review performance, I was told I will get only 1% raise and in order for me to get a raise in the future I need to not only meet all requirements, I have to exceed the expectations or move to another position. I had already began seeking employment before I was told that. Sprints management and teamlead are piss poor. They do not want to help you, do not want to take and Irated call. Many times I had my hand up for assistance, the teamlead turned their head and kept walking. I was told by one of my team leads to not send and calls to the assist line until I contact her because she looked at a report and said I had more calls going to the assist desk than the other employees on the team.

One of my old teamleads pulled up an account and was going to write me up for something she said I should not have done. I told the teamlead, I was not working at 7pm. She deleted the screen. The team lead had a very nasty attitude and not helpful. When we asked her questions that we were not sure about, she would tell us: you all are the experts you need to research wizzard. I got so sick and tired of her nasty attitude and she not know how to manuver thru the various screens. I E-mailed my manager about the teamleads attitude. My manager told me she will talk with me about the situation today or tomorrow. So she did not speak with me on that day or the next day. I got up from my desk with the intentions of telling sprint to kiss my grits. I decided to report the teamlead to human resources. The team leads initial are: CJ

The next week after human resource contacted my manager about the situation, my manager called me in her office to discuss the matter.There were other that took the same steps of going to human resource regarding the teamleads attitude. Later the team lead went out of dissability, she was stressed out and going to have a nervous break down. I was very glad to know that she would be away from work a few weeks, as a matter of fact I cared less if she did not come back to work. I was not concerned about he health because she was not concerned about me.

A few people employed with sprint tried to form a union, they are no longer working with sprint.

One day during my team meeting I asked my team lead if Nextel is unionized, when I asked that, everyone got very quite, my team lead said I don’t know and did not want to elaborate on the subject. My team lead rushed and ended the team meeting because I think he was thinking I was going to ask another question about Nextel emerging with sprint and the union. You should have seen how fast the meeting was ended and he rushed out of the conference room.

My other team lead initial: BB. She continues to monitor my calls and mark me down below 95. I told her one day to let me see and listen to the call. The customer said he want the plan changed and later he decided not to change the plan. BB had already marked my call below 95. I told BB the reason I did not change the plan because the customer said he decided not to have his plan changed is the reason I did not change the plan. I immediatly went to my desk and E-mailed my manager Alvenia Young ( which is no longer employed at sprint, she was layed off) about the situation. From that day until I moved to another team, all of my monitors were 95 and above.

The employees hated BB so much until they followed her home and vandelized her car 2 times. I said whoever did that is going about that the wrong way, they should use all of that energy on her behind ( a good old fashion beatdown).

If any of your family or friends have service with sprint, tell them to cancel the service. If you or anyone that you know are seeking employment, don’t go to sprint, because they practice unfair labor laws.

I indeed plan to see legal actions against sprint about the reason I was fired.

Sprint also reaquired all employees to cross sell sprint products to all customers. Sprint developed some junk called: focuse on the basics. This was a scheme to keep employees from getting paid all commission of cross selling sprints products. A lot of employees refused to cross sell because of this reason and they were written up for not cross selling or not meeting the sales guideline. These employees were fired and some quite before fired. I know one girl that left sprint because she was not meeting the sales guidelines. She is now employed at Wachovia making less money but she said she was happy with the job at Wachovia and less stressed. There were a few people I know personally that left sprint and now a Wachovia employee.

Sprint is one of the worst companies that I worked for.

Before I left sprint, I had 4 weeks training for business. Sprint began to send all of their call for non business customers to another call center. I did not get a monetary raise for the training because that was a ladderal move. Everyone that went thru the 4 week business training did not get a salary increase. All of the employee’s were very angry about this.

One employee on BB team, said that BB is trying to write her up to fire. The employee was passing out information regarding a union at sprint. It was not long before she was fired..

I could go on and on about all of the unfair labor practices but I am tired of talking about sprint. Now sprint is going to pay me dearly for all of the harrasment and unfair labor practice that I went thru and being fired.
Comment by Michael Hampton | 2005/11/14 at 10:35:02

B.H., I do want to make a couple of quick comments. Currently you can’t do any sort of union organizing activity during working hours or at the work site itself. You can do it all you want during lunch or before or after your shift, though. That’s the way the law is right now. After all, people should be working during work hours, as a general rule.

Someone who did participate in union organizing activity during work hours on the work site could be fired without recourse. But if you limit it to before/after shift, and off the work site, and you’re still fired, then it’s retaliation, and you have one monster of a legal case.
Comment by Elmsford | 2005/11/22 at 20:26:24

Before the merge nextel was a good place to work, after the merge the place is running in to a dump, no one knows if we are going to be closed down. managers are acting like gods and HR is covering there butt to avoid any possible lawsuits.. they treat anyone they dont like mostly non whites with crap or they consider unproductive with utmost disrepsect and unfair treament.

i hate working here already.
Comment by Call Center Services | 2006/02/06 at 13:03:40

Its been a few months since the merge…are working & management attitudes still questionable? I use Sprint & service hasnt gitten any better.
Comment by Perrin Scudder | 2006/03/22 at 10:12:42

I am performing a Business analysis on Sprint Nextel for Regis Univerrsity. I was wondering if any one had some information reguarding Human Resources and also the Information system.