AT&T Suggests To 300K Employees To Lobby the FCC 239
Several readers sent in the news that AT&T's top lobbyist sent a letter to all 300,000 employees urging them to give feedback to the FCC as it gears up for rulemaking on net neutrality. He even supplied talking points approved by the PR department. The lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, suggested that employees use their personal email accounts when they weigh in with the FCC. Pro-net-neutrality group Free Press has now likened Cicconi's letter to astroturfing: "Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion."
Not entirely the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us would like to preserve the illusion that our government isn't totally at the beck and call of corporate interests. This sort of astroturfing is exactly what makes people cynical, when individual citizens are roped in to parroting the lines of the place they work for.
Perhaps they won't check to see if you have done their bidding, but what if they did? What if it turns out that was a job requirement buried somewhere in that huge contract you signed when you started your job?
The current lobbying system is bad enough, we don't need to make it even worse by blurring the line between the opinions of individuals and that of corporations.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet millions of people send chain e-mails every single day.
Sure the CEO can't tell anybody followed his suggestion, but how many people actually KNOW he can't?
Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation (Score:3, Insightful)
Go ahead AT&T employees. Send a letter.
Tell the FCC to support net neutrality because you want to be able to get your music and movies from ANY website, not just att.com websites. No I do not recommend bcc:ing your boss on that email.
Coming from a high level exec - why not skip? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming from one of the company's most senior executives, it's hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion.
When I've worked for large companies, the further up the chain the less likely I'd be to care whatsoever what it said. That makes this even less of a suggestion, and more like a wish, that anyone may or may not fulfill (or in fact even read as this sounds like a message I would have just skipped over). It's not like a "high level exec" is going to come by the office next Monday and ask how the letter to the FCC is coming!
I don't see anything wrong with a "high level exec" or anyone else saying that if you care about the issue, contact your congressman. Who are YOU to say that all employees agree with what he wants them to say? Meanwhile he has pointed out to them just who to talk to, one way or the other.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Some of us would like to preserve the illusion that our government isn't totally at the beck and call of corporate interests.
Too fucking bad, Alice in Wonderland. Maybe you need to wake up.
The preservation of that illusion is one of two main perpetuating forces behind that reality (money being the other).
Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation (Score:2, Insightful)
Company tells people to vote a particular way: Bad.
Union tells people to vote a particular way: Good.
Because the Company is all about its own self interest.
Unions are for the employees and don't have any self interests.
If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Any large organization will want to control its masses.
Re:is what it should be (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. AT&T and Verizon should be forbidden from donating money or sending lobbyists into Congress, but if the individual human beings want to do the former, then I have no problem with it. Corporations should not have a right to free speech, but people should.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
its pretty easy for an employer to check if their employees have followed through on such a "recommendation."
The letter is clearly written as a suggestion, not a demand. Yes, it uses standard scare tactics to suggest that if their point of view loses, there will be massive layoffs, but it doesn't actually say you'll be fired or even disciplined in any way for failing to participate in this particular lobbying effort. Thus, if you're fired and you can show that you were fired because you didn't do this, you can likely sue for damages and win (especially if you can show others who didn't participate were also fired). Even in at-will states, you're begging for a lawsuit if you fire an employee for something like this.
Along the same lines, my employer has its very own Political Action Committee. I occasionally get emails asking me to join the PAC and help advance "our interests". I ignore those emails, and am not a member of the PAC, nor have I ever donated a penny to it. And yet, I've not been fired nor have I been denied promotions or raises.
Re:Coming from a high level exec - why not skip? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
Any large organization will want to control its masses.
True. The big difference between an employer trying to influence its employees politics and a union trying to influence its members politics is that an employer can fire employees, while a union can't. That's kind of a large difference in terms of power influence. Union officials are also generally elected positions, so the power flows the other way as well.
Bad Comparison! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Sierra Club and FSF are voluntary associations of people whose whole bases for association is a common ideology: members of those organizations pay the leaders of those organizations specifically to help them acheive particular shared ideological aims. So, advice from those leaders on steps the members can take to make the money that they pay to acheive those ends be more effective is consistent with the job those members are paying the professional staff of the organization to do. And the members of the Sierra Club and FSF aren't dependent on those organizations, generally, for their livelihood.
AT&T employees aren't, as a general rule, voluntarily paying AT&T management to help them defeat net neutrality, and are, OTOH, dependent on AT&T for their jobs, so the circumstances aren't even remotely parallel.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, this *is* AT&T, a company that was allowed to get away with blatant violations of the law and snooping on American citizens without a warrant.
In fact, the one thing we know with absolute certainty is that they *can* tell if the employees have followed the CEO's suggestion.
Oh, yeah . . that. . .
Pug
Re:Verizon did this as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
A union's relationship to its members is more analogous to a corporation's relationship to its shareholders than a corporation's relationship to its employees. Sure, you can have bad managers (and union leadership are managers of the union, though they have different titles) acting in the managers' self-interest rather than members'/shareholders' shared interest in either case, but a corporation's management doesn't even in theory work in the interest of the employees, it works in the interest of the shareholders.
So there is a pretty big difference between union leadership making recommendations on political actions to the people whose shared interests they are paid to represent, and a corporation's management making recommendation for political action to their "human resources".
Re:Not entirely the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the big deal?
Preaching politics on the company dime is right up there with promoting religion during office hours. It's your employer abusing their captive audience. If you don't go along, you could be seen as not being a team player. You're getting paid to do a job, not be a political pawn. It worked so well for the health insurance companies, having their employees out acting like dickwads at public meetings. Be sure and remind them to change their employer branded clothing to look more like a real grassroots uprising.
And it was wrong. I remember when the internet went private. I didn't hear AT&T or any of the others complaining about all that new infrastructure and business they inherited. Now that the system needs major upgrades no one wants to pony up. Instead they want to find ways to tax traffic, make money without making any additional investment. The Wall Street model. Net neutrality rules threaten that grand plan. They might not be able to cover those multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. Oh, noes!
Tell you what, if those circuits are that unprofitable, sell them and get out of the infrastructure business. No one owes AT&T a living. If it's too tough out there, get into banking. Corporate whiners are the worst.
Re:Always err on the side of reducing power (Score:3, Insightful)
Anytime a major ISP has tried something fishy they have been slapped down hard by customers.
Sort of like when Apple tied the iPhone to the ATT network. Oh man the shit storm that erupted from customer sent them packing...
Sort of like when Charter started imposing bandwidth caps on customers who had their advertised "unlimited" internet access. Yup, turned that one right around.
Sort of like when *any* cellular network charged for both incoming and outgoing SMS packets. Good thing that uproar ended that practice.
Sort of like when ISPs started redirecting failed DNS website queries to their own ad-laden search pages. God I never thought that would stop!
What you describe is how it *should* work, and believe me we would all love if it did. Unfortunately that's not how the real world always works. Fact of the matter is there just isn't enough competition in ISPs for customers to really vote with their wallets. If customers can't vote with their wallets, companies don't have consequences for their actions. ATT does something you don't like... are you going to go to another DSL provider? That still uses ATT pipes? Internet backbones are still a natural monopoly in their respective regions and I don't expect some new technology will come around to change that. As much as we hate giving the government more power here, I would rather see some decisions made by a group who is at least remotely answerable to me versus a company that is only answerable to its shareholders.
Is net neutrality a good thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
The general meme I have seen most places is that "Net Neutrality" is the only way to go. However, I have to ask, if your ISP promises to treat all data streams equally, how are services that need guaranteed low latency going to work?
For most internet activities, such as watching youtube videos, downloading or uploading large files, and viewing web pages, a second or two of latency is no big deal. The ISP can give you bandwidth when it has it to spare.
However, for things like online gaming, Video and audio chat, and ESPECIALLY for cloud gaming services, latency is CRITICAL. The ISP needs to allocate the highest priority to transmitting these packets without any delay. Even if it has to push back or pause requests from other applications. No, a bigger pipe is not the answer : bandwidth will always be a scarce commodity, and your ISP needs to be able to make sure that certain services always have enough.
You'd have to run a client on your machine or something to specify or sign a particular packet stream as needing low latency communications. The ISP would either meter your total "low latency" bandwidth for a month or limit how much bandwidth/second it could use up.
Doing it this way might not be network neutral, but it's THE way to make services like cloud gaming and video chat work smoothly and without problems.
Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from being pathetically ridiculous, this clearly shows how the top management at AT&T thinks backwards. Instead of trying to provide a better service for their customers, since there is a strong demand, they just try to avoid having to face the demand. Wow...
Let's hope that the FCC will not be influenced by this.
Mobile providers are an area where free market is rarely seen thriving, since it is so expensive to deploy a decent infrastructure. This is not to say that they could not be competitive, but just that the money involved to invest in a more robust infrastructure is so high that they prefer pocketing the benefits and restricting the service provided.
Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation (Score:3, Insightful)
I won't argue too heard when you say that governments and unions are corrupt and filthy.
I'll start arguing when you say that businesses are any better.
Re:If you disagree say why (Score:3, Insightful)
Fortunately, we have a system that combines incompetent government bureaucracy with the unaccountability of a corporation.