2001-08-15 - 22:18 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Cannibals ?

From what I read and hear I have formed opinions.

Let me see now. In the beginning was AT&T (who basically owned telephony including its local exchanges and long lines. in the United States) and its manufacturing arm, Western Electric. Then came the government mandated split, thus the birth of the Baby Bells who more or less immediately attempted to consume their Mother. AT&T then called its manufacturing arm AT&T, designating by logo and words just which part of AT&T a place might be.

Somewhere along the line AT&T split off the manufacturing business to Lucent Technology and became more or less long line and specialties only.

Lucent retaining some of the goodies or took the orphan manufacturing division and sold it to a company called Avaya who in turn sold to Celestica who is I guess a sort of job shop manufacturer and one of their customers is guess who ? Avaya.

It is all very confusing to me, the Baby Bells are about to burst their britches as well as their shirts, while all the other parts of the communication facilities are selling themselves to other companies, getting by increments smaller, and eroding the rights and job security of people still there who are approaching retirement age.

One thing fought for and striven for by the Union and held on to was that there would be no part timers in manufacturing, from AT&T/Western Electric on through the various permutations until Celestica managed to force temporary employees down the workers throats. They also seem to be waffling about other rights and benefits of the employees who remain.

I just wonder how long before the Union people who have a closed shop will no longer have a shop ? Will the manufacturing arm boil down to a thousand Chiefs surounding one Indian and putting the pressure on that poor devil to come up consistently with marvels and miracles ? What has happened to the Maquillidoras south of the border once owned by one or another of the above mentioned companies ? The Hong Kong, Singapore chip makers ? Who now owns them, and if sold where did the money go ?

I happened to see in this mornings paper an article by Linda A. Johnson of the Associated Press telling of the Golden Shower of Lucre which rained down on Lucent's ex-CEO, Richard A. McGinn and fiscal officer, Deborah C. Hopkins.

Johnson's headline was, "Lucent gave millions to fired executives."

If I understand correctly what she wrote, McGinn's take was all the legal costs were paid relating to the end of his employment barring him from suing Lucent. Mr. McGinn also received a lump sum payment of $5.5 (that's million folks) ---- and as a 30 year employee of Lucent and predecessor companies such as AT&T he will also separately receive a pension worth approximately $1 million annually. The financial officer bagged a lump sum of $3.3 million dollars combined salary and bonus (salary AND bonus ? Bonus for what, being the financial officer of a failing operation ? ) and paid her for about 120,000 shares in unvested stock that she held along with another 15,000 restricted shares that had matured totaling just over $1.5 million dollars.

It befuddles and boggles me that in this case as in a lot of others, the big dogs in a corporation have the golden parachutes to fall back on when things go sour. They get the pelf even though they seem to have been responsible for the descent into hell for the outfit that dumped them.

It appears to me that the low value of AT&T stock and Lucent stock now, is tied to faulty corporate structure and misled methods of operation.

And the peons who dare to be late five times in a given period often get fired . . . . . .instead of being given a liberal bonus with their pink slip.

Oh, I am sure that the recipients of the manna have many reasons to advance to justify the receipt their windfall, but to me I think it is all bull puckey !

It seems to me that these big outfits sell themselves to each other, splitting into smaller and smaller entities and in the case of their peon type employees who actually do the work, the brass have turned into Cannibals . . . . .

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