CWA Uncovers Massive Verizon Offshoring Operation in Philippines

[Omaha Steve]

In LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141449133

[eridani]

1. Verizon Calls in SWAT Team to Keep Exploited Overseas Workers Under Wraps

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/13/verizon-calls-swat-team-keep-exploited-overseas-workers-under-wrap

Representatives from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union whose members are currently engaged in a weeks-long strike against Verizon for its "corporate greed," say they discovered this week that the communications behemoth has publicly lied about the extent of its offshoring of jobs.

The union representatives, including CWA staff, a representative of UNI (global labor federation) and representatives of KMU (a Filipino union), traveled to the Philippines for four days this week to investigate a report from local Verizon employees who sent word that the corporation was lying to its American workers about the size of its offshore operations in the country.

"Verizon is offshoring work far beyond what has previously been reported and what the company publicly has claimed. Verizon is offshoring customer service calls to numerous call centers in the Philippines, where workers are paid just $1.78 an hour and forced to work overtime without compensation," wrote the CWA in a statement.

When Verizon got wind of CWA's discovery on Wednesday, according to the union, rather than meet with union representatives the company sent a SWAT team and armed guards after them.

"Terrified that the public might find out about what has happened to the good middle-class jobs the company has shipped overseas, Verizon sent private armed security forces after peaceful CWA representatives and called in a SWAT team armed with automatic weapons," the CWA said.

[Snarkoleptic]

2. Verizon seems to be more of cash-extraction machine than cell phone company.

http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/2016/04/just_plain_wrong_ge_and_verizo.php

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam claims, in a recent op-ed and fact sheet, that it’s “just plain wrong” to assert that Verizon doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes and that the company paid a 35 percent tax rate in 2015. While McAdam doesn’t elaborate, he likely is tallying the company’s global taxes to make this claim. However, the annual taxes that the company pays to the federal government in recent years has been a lot lower than 35 percent and, thus, McAdam’s indignation is rather artificial.

In fact, over the past 15 years, Verizon has paid a federal tax rate averaging just 12.4 percent on $121 billion in U.S. profits, meaning that the company has found a way to shelter about two-thirds of its U.S. profits from federal taxes over this period. In five of the last 15 years, the company paid zero in federal taxes. While there is no indication that this spectacular feat of tax avoidance is anything but legal (the company’s consistently low tax rates are most likely due to overly generous accelerated depreciation tax provisions that Congress has expanded over the last decade), few Americans would describe the company avoiding tax on $78 billion of profits as “fair”