Apr. 14, 2002 - 20:44 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

"Alas Poor Yorick"

Do times change that fast ? Can they ? Apparently they do. When my Dad retired from the Western Union it was still a going concern, now it seems to be just a means of sending money to someone. Its other functions made obsolete as the times required new machinery and the company's failure to update and seek new ventures.

I see in today's paper what appears to be the remnant of a proud organization headed down the tubes. It used to be the manufacturing arm of The Bell Telephone System which included Bell Labs (the innovator). Later it became Western Electric and still its output was quality stuff and Bell Labs stayed with the manufacturing business. Remember the old candlestick telephones ? Man you could bounce them off a wall, thence to a concrete floor and no breakage. Of course it seems that modern thought says, "If you manufacture something everlasting, then what do you do next ?" But Bell Labs, a part of Western Electric, was always coming up with some new feature. One of the things Bell Labs came up with was the transistor.

Seems like the government feared monopoly and broke AT&T up. It gets a bit foggy to me from there on, I think AT&T held on to their long lines system and split off manufacturing to go on its own. Then the manufacturing was called, what ? AT&T Business Systems I think. Then came the unspeakable thing, "Downsizing." They made an offer to the employees to take early retirement with a package that was fair I think, it entailed paid HMO, partial payment of ones telephone bill and an added amount that employees in that age group would get 15% more on their pension until they reached 65. The fortunate employees who retired knew what they were doing. Of those who didn't many of them were laid off and I think I heard that those left were downgraded.

Then it became by some mysterious foible of corporate activity, Lucent Technology. It went on from there, things spinning so rapidly that pieces were thrown off. Then it became Celestica (Or some such) and then Avaya.

From what I have heard it became more or less a job shop operation. I also heard that they finally got part time workers, those who would work for less, with no benefits. Something that had been fought against by employees and union from years back. Things seemed to deteriorate . . . . Avaya laid off more than 800 workers in Colorado last year and thousands more elsewhere.

Now there are some former employees filing age discrimination suits against Avaya. Five of them claim service at the company spanning 16 to 29 years. According to them their layoff was targeted for lay off in April and May 2001. In June 2001 Avaya offered an early retirement plan in which employees could gain full pension benefits if they qualified by adding five years to both their age and tenure with the company. Laid off people complained to the EEOC saying that with those added years they would have qualified for a full pension. By getting their pink slips one to two months earlier they ended up with a much smaller pension.

To me it much resembles the layoffs just before Thanksgiving and Christmas that used to happen in order to avoid giving anybody anything, bonuses, turkeys and / or paid days off. Seems to me that Avaya could have avoided layoffs until after the offer of early retirement expired rather than put some oldsters who had spent an entire career with Bell Labs on the street with a skimpy pension.

So, whither goes the state of the art research and development of sophisticated communications ? Bell Labs R.I.P. ?

Bits and pieces of the biggies selling themselves to each other until, what like the Cheshire Cat ? Only a fading smirk.

Someday, somewhere I see in my mind an archeologist holding a handset up and saying, "Alas Poor Yorick" . . . . . . .

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