Pacific Bell workers rally against layoffs in front of Oakland headquarters downtown

About a hundred communications workers from local 9415 held a noisy rally today in front of the downtown Oakland headquarters of SBC/Pacific Bell. The rally was to protest the recent announcement by SBC to cut 3000 jobs by the end of the year, now blamed on a "surplus of workers" and the excuse that the company is not profitable enough. Yet speakers at the rally testified to the recent attempts by the company to force workers to work overtime, implying that indeed there is NOT a "surplus" of workers (meaning too many workers). Also, the workers at the rally detailed how the claim of unprofitability is a lie due to the fact that the Pacific Bell portion of SBC is making OVER the "profitability rate" agreed upon when SBC entered the regional competition for phone service by purchasing Pacific Bell (not to mention it's more profitable than the rest of the SBC corporation).

In a nutshell, SBC is lying about their profits and are going to lay off 3,000 workers by the end of the holidays, which will in turn lead to speed-ups for the workers and degraded service for the customers. All because they are not happy with the agreed upon rates of profitability.

The workers have begun a petition campaign as well as an action campaign to force SBC to play by the rules they agreed to when they bought Pacific Bell in the first place. There was also talk of collectively resisting the forced overtime since there is a "surplus of workers" as SBC claims. If there are too many workers, why do they need to force overtime?

An investigation has been launched by the Public Utilities Commission into the claims by SBC for the need to lay off employees due to lack of profits.