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Bahr Urges Support for Telecom Sector
CWA President Morton Bahr gave members of the Senate Democratic Caucus a somber overview of the state of the telecommunications industry and urged support for measures to help stop the sector's free fall.
The briefing was co-chaired by Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) and Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) with about 30 Democratic senators attending.
In his informal "Telecom Economics 101" review, Bahr said that competition in the telecom sector has been driven by government actions without a careful assessment of the consequences for the industry. "No one in government raised the question of whether the process of divestiture in 1984 was in the best interests of the nation," he said, adding that the current direction for competition at the local level also was producing unwanted results.
Competition in long distance, in place for more than 25 years, has seen prices drop well below the level that would produce profits for any of the companies, Bahr said. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 directed further competition at the local level, but the result for the regional Bells has been a loss of one million lines a quarter this year. The year 2001 was the first in history when there were fewer access lines than the previous year, he added. Some 320 competitive local exchange carriers are now out of business, not surprising in an industry where a 15-20 percent of market share is necessary to remain viable, he noted.
Bahr also pointed out the enormity of telecom manufacturing job losses since the 1984 divestiture, noting that Western Electric's (now Lucent Technologies) 180,000 jobs in 1984 had dwindled to just 800 today, as work continues to be shifted overseas. CWA and the Electrical Workers have been working hard to save jobs at Lucent, but the company and contract manufacturers persist in closing U.S. operations and cutting U.S. jobs.
At Bell Labs, once the crown jewel of America's research and development, CWA today represents just 500 workers and long-term research is no longer being done, Bahr noted. Overall, some 40,000-50,000 jobs have been lost in the unionized sector in the last 18 months, he said.
Bahr told the senators that passage of the Breaux bill to help increase high speed Internet access and capacity was critical to revitalize the economy, create jobs and to bring the benefits of high speed data services, such as telemedicine and distance learning, to tens of millions of Americans.
The briefing was co-chaired by Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) and Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) with about 30 Democratic senators attending.
In his informal "Telecom Economics 101" review, Bahr said that competition in the telecom sector has been driven by government actions without a careful assessment of the consequences for the industry. "No one in government raised the question of whether the process of divestiture in 1984 was in the best interests of the nation," he said, adding that the current direction for competition at the local level also was producing unwanted results.
Competition in long distance, in place for more than 25 years, has seen prices drop well below the level that would produce profits for any of the companies, Bahr said. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 directed further competition at the local level, but the result for the regional Bells has been a loss of one million lines a quarter this year. The year 2001 was the first in history when there were fewer access lines than the previous year, he added. Some 320 competitive local exchange carriers are now out of business, not surprising in an industry where a 15-20 percent of market share is necessary to remain viable, he noted.
Bahr also pointed out the enormity of telecom manufacturing job losses since the 1984 divestiture, noting that Western Electric's (now Lucent Technologies) 180,000 jobs in 1984 had dwindled to just 800 today, as work continues to be shifted overseas. CWA and the Electrical Workers have been working hard to save jobs at Lucent, but the company and contract manufacturers persist in closing U.S. operations and cutting U.S. jobs.
At Bell Labs, once the crown jewel of America's research and development, CWA today represents just 500 workers and long-term research is no longer being done, Bahr noted. Overall, some 40,000-50,000 jobs have been lost in the unionized sector in the last 18 months, he said.
Bahr told the senators that passage of the Breaux bill to help increase high speed Internet access and capacity was critical to revitalize the economy, create jobs and to bring the benefits of high speed data services, such as telemedicine and distance learning, to tens of millions of Americans.