Pacifc Bell cared about their customers--AT&T (SBC) cares about their profits

After 15-days to get our phone service back... This story on Crooks & Liars pisses me off. (I condensed it to just AT&T)

 

Obama meets with U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Gave Karl Rove's non-profit PAC $75 Million)

 

Today, President Obama addressed the leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing trade association representing large international corporations.

 

Obama asked these business executives to “get in the game" and spend some of the trillions of dollars of STRAIGHT profit on job creation.

 

In fact the leaders of the Chamber such as AT&T has spent the past few years rewarding themselves with millions in additional compensation while eliminating American jobs.

 

Telecommunications Giant AT&T Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

– AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was awarded a compensation package valued at $20.3 million in 2009, a jump of 35% from 2008. Last year, AT&T devoted an extra $8.99 million into Stephenson’s pension plan, ensuring that his retirement will include a pension “equal to 60 percent of his highest average salary and bonus in three of his last 10 years at the company. Although he’s not currently eligible for retirement, his pension is valued at an estimated $31 million today.”
– In recent years, AT&T has aggressively downsized its American workforce. In 2008, the company killed over 16,000 jobs as the recession hit. But in the last two years as AT&T enjoyed record profits, the company announced layoffs of “hundreds” in Kansas, 96 in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, 150 in Connecticut, 525 technicians in California, and 140 jobs in Oklahoma. These are LAYOFFS not retirements.

Here is the BEST part....a comment posted to this story.  I had heard about this back when it happened:
Comment by Lori: "I was one of those 16,000 laid off by ATT in 2009. ATT laid off 5K in 2008, right before Xmas. I remember at the time, right when the 2008 lay-offs were beginning, that our Director spoke to us on a conference call about Stephenson's big concerns were at the time. Apparently, he was concerned that no one would ride in the elevator with him. The story went that he got on the elevator and the first time the elevator stopped, everyone that had been on the elevator when Stephenson got on, got off - even though buttons had been pushed for floors that had not been reached yet. Stephenson's solution? He encouraged all of the people on his 'team,' VP's most of them, to impede on rank-and-file employee's breaks in the cafeteria by sitting down with them and starting conversations. Randall Stephenson - winning hearts and minds wherever he goes! These are the minds that run our largest corporations today. Morons."