🚀 go-pugleaf

>4) Arguments that the phone companies should simply take in less money
>I won't buy, since I didn't hear those complaining about the cost
>volunteering to work for less this year than last, which is what they
>are asking the phone companies to do.
>
>Rich Hammond	hammond@bellcore-cs-gw.arpa

You may not buy such arguments, but I certainly do. First off, I qualify
under your criteria, though I disagree that such criteria have any
bearing on this. I am a federal employee. There has been a federal pay
freeze in effect. Inflation continues. Therefore, I AM volunteering to
work for less money next year, as my salary remains the same while the
value of the amount of money lessens. Therefore I (by your standards)
must be speaking from a position of virtue and self-sacrifice, and my
words thus have greater value, coming from such an admirable source. 
(need I add :-) ?) ('tis true, anyway...)

Anyhow, to get to the meat of the matter -- the telcos (at least the
oldline BOCs and probably AT&T itself) waste so much of the income they
now extort from the customer base that they most certainly CAN take in
less money and still provide improved service. From the little details
(that add up to huge sums when taken in toto) like the fact that they
don't bother to recycle the envelopes that come with the bills [if you
turn in a perfectly good unused envelope when paying a bill in person
they throw it away!], to the major wastage [Southwestern Bell just built
a huge new office building in downtown St. Louis, putting in $400,000
worth of fancy marble in the lobby, and then covering it with another
layer of decorative stone because they didn't like the way it looked!],
vast executive-level salaries, fancy offices, and inflated administrative
staffs, the telcos have a long history of throwing money away because
they could always use their lawyers to manipulate the PUCs in every
state to get just what they wanted. Consumer groups don't stand a chance
against their resources, and they own enough legislators to control any
and all applicable laws.

When the telcos adopt the federal GS-schedule pay scale as their pay
standard (which limits white-collar pay to the range of about $10 - $68 K
which is enough to live on and get by if you live sanely), when the
offices they work in have the same level of furnishings that mine have
(adequate functionally but no particular fanciness or costs wasted on
decor), and when all the corporate-level perks and indulgences like
political and social donations are eliminated, THEN I'll accept that
they are at a justifiable level of expense. If this situation was
somehow forced upon them, and then an independent auditing calculated
what the phone billing charges would be, I venture to surmise that our
phone bills would be half or less of their current levels.

Note that I am not saying that the "phone man" out there in the truck is
getting overpaid and living a life of luxury at my expense. He might be,
but I doubt it. The money is not going into the salaries of low-level
personnel (though there are probably excessive numbers of clerical and
secretarial types in the administrative offices whose jobs would be
eliminated when those offices are pared down to strictly necessary
levels); it is going into buildings, furnishings, empire-building, and
the pockets of upper levels of a bloated and unneeded management, who
have the maintenance of their own and their compatriots' comfort as
their main interest, not the providing of the best possible telephone
service at the lowest possible cost.

Will Martin