Dealing with family obligations.
Month: December 2012
Gee, What a Surprise, Regulation Encouraged Cell Phone Companies’ Investments
Last year, the government blocked the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile, and the free-market mousketeers said that it was going to kill private sector investment.
Well, not so much:
Last year, the regulatory agencies charged with overseeing the wireless communications market did something unusual: they actually regulated. After spending the Bush years eagerly facilitating the consolidation of the wireless market, in 2011 the FCC and the Justice Department blocked AT&T from merging with T-Mobile over fears that the deal would be anti-competitive and result in job losses. At the time, conservatives in the media decried this move as gross overregulation of a burgeoning market that would dampen investment and stifle technological development. But here we are almost one year out, and those dire prognostications haven’t played out. In fact, quite the opposite has happened.
………
So what’s happened since then? Well, when the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was first announced, T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, was looking to wash its hands of the U.S. market. But after the merger fell through and AT&T was obligated to fork over $3 billion to T-Mobile along with a sizeable chunk of wireless spectrum, T-Mobile took the money and invested it almost immediately in network modernization. Now Deutsche Telekom — once eager to be done with the U.S. — is moving to acquire low-cost carrier Metro PCS to build out T-Mobile’s high-speed 4G LTE network.
Meanwhile, the Japanese telecommunications firm Softbank is snapping up Sprint Nextel and infusing $8 billion into the wireless carrier, which will be used to build out its own network. Back when people still thought the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was a sure thing, it was assumed that Sprint would have had to merge with Verizon and we’d be left with a wireless duopoly. Now both Sprint and T-Mobile are investing in their own networks and working to emerge as serious competitors.
And what of AT&T? When the company first announced the proposed merger with T-Mobile in March 2011, it made much of the fact that it would “increase AT&T’s infrastructure investment in the U.S. by more than $8 billion over seven years.” Three weeks ago, AT&T bumped up that number significantly, announcing that “it would invest an extra $14 billion to expand its wireless and broadband services over the next three years.” The New York Times reported on November 9 that the decision to boost infrastructure investment “was motivated by AT&T’s failed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA.”
As a rule of thumb, if a free market absolutist says that something is white, bet on black.
This Will Never Make it to Obama’s Desk
While I am heartened that the senate has passed an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill to ban indefinite detention without trial of US citizens and green card holders:
The Senate voted late on Thursday to prohibit the government from imprisoning American citizens and green card holders apprehended in the United States in indefinite detention without trial.
While the move appeared to bolster protections for domestic civil liberties, it was opposed by an array of rights groups who claimed it implied that other types of people inside the United States could be placed in military detention, opening the door to using the military to perform police functions.
The measure was an amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which is now pending on the Senate floor, and was sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. The Senate approved adding it to the bill by a vote of 67 to 29.
“What if something happens and you are of the wrong race in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are picked up and held without trial or charge in detention ad infinitum?” Ms. Feinstein said during the floor debate. “We want to clarify that that isn’t the case — that the law does not permit an American or a legal resident to be picked up and held without end, without charge or trial.”
The power of the government to imprison, without trial, Americans accused of ties to terrorism has been in dispute for a decade.
Even if Boehner were to support this, and my guess is that he won’t, I would expect the White House to fight this, on the theory that this is an executive branch prerogative.
What a Surprise. Management Lies About Labor
As you may, or may not be aware, the clerks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are on Strike.
The Los Angeles Times, in a reporting job that harkens back to their pre-Otis Chandler days, when they were the worst major daily in the nation, takes a claim by the management negotiator, and reports it as fact:
Stephen Berry, lead negotiator for the shipping lines and cargo terminals, said the clerical workers have been offered a deal that includes “absolute job security,” a raise that would take average annual pay to $195,000 from $165,000, 11 weeks’ paid vacation and a generous pension increase.
Of course, the idea that “clerks” get $165,000 a year, much less %195,000 a year.
Well, the slightly less credulous Long Beach Post, reports a slightly different number:
Employers however, feel most of these claims are highly questionable. They say that workers have rejected fair proposals in the last few years including the most recent one offered on Monday, the day before the walkout, which included: absolute guarantees that OCU workers will not be laid off; full-time pay for 52 weeks a year despite workload; permission to access computer database update histories and audit trails so as to allow clerical workers to research if anyone is using technology to divert their work; and most prominently, increase their compensation packages to over $190,000 in wages and benefits by 2016. Clerical workers currently make an average of $165,000 per year.
Well, if you assume about 10 hours of OT a week, normal in this environment, and that 30% of all remuneration is of the non wage form (healthcare, vacation, sick time, pensions), you get a base hourly rate of about $46/hour, which is nice, but not spectacular.
Also note that the union is demanding access to the job routing database, which indicates that there is a real suspicion that management is transferring jobs elsewhere.
Also, look how another source, from the same Stephen Berry, drops the pay number even further:
Stephen Berry, a negotiator for the employers, said under the old contracts, workers earn either $40 or $41 per hour, receive a full pension after as little as 10 years of work, and receive 11 weeks of paid time off annually.
Berry said the employers have offered slight raises. But both sides agree the dispute is not about money.
Union officials say the companies have been quietly moving some jobs to Taipei, Taiwan; Costa Rica; Charlotte, N.C.; and Texas, a charge employer representatives vehemently deny.
So,we are down to $40/hour.
But we are still relying on Stephen Berry, who is paid to lie for employers.
What if we found an independent source, something like an official government job posting, which lists the salary for a “Cargo Audit Clerk III- Provisional” as $16.69 – $22.80 Hourly.
Kevin Drum took the LA Times article as gospel, but his readers provided links (which I am using here) which show that both the Times, as well as Mr. Berry, to be full of crap.