Anyone in the Qwest markets have their pager or call-outs altered recently?
15 replies (most recent on top)
No more pages duty in Colorado and New Mexico unless you support 911. Crying all afternoon over that one. To be honest it’s our customers that will suffer in the end. Like to be a fly on the wall come Monday morning when your 24x7x4 hour commit customers finally get ahold of their sales rep.
No overtime, must notify manager 3 hours before working but it will still be shot down. Critical systems down but they tell you to stay home and let it wait until Monday. Fiber cuts, no problem just go home at 4pm. Salaried people made to work 60 - 70 hours a week or more handling techs issues. Way to many contractors working so the liability if shifted to them. They still have pager pay but you won’t be going out once they call your manager.
They told us (national) they are looking to expand our coverage areas so they aren't paying multiple techs standby. First question i ask was, how are we going to meet our two hour commit times to the customer, when we have to drive up to four or five hours just to get there?
Of course, old shady CTL has thought that one through. Now, they are going to claim that when we call the customer and say we are on our way, that contact meets the two hour commit time.
Now, you and i both know this is not going to fly, especially at government accounts, transport for Comcast, and 911 centers. I see more lawsuits coming, which will cost them more in the long run, than paying us standby pay.
National side still has oncall pay and no OT restrictions.
Hearing they are wanting to change the pager duty to weekend only in my part of Washington.
We are hearing rumblings of it in Idaho. Nothing firm yet.
No standby pay means no leverage to fire you if you don't answer call or take call out. That's why they started paying us in the first place. No standby, big deal. Need the extra money? Simple. Drag your feet a little now and then on a test and turnup and make it that way. There are ways around all these little stumbling blocks.
Central florida eliminated call out 2 years ago no one on schedule in our county EVER...call out pay taken away at that time ! No home phone calls either...we just don't offer callout !! Not even essential lines? Goes hand in hand with our new no overtime policy, that was even added to the company M&P !! You need FULL supervisor approval for anything over 30 mins OT...Normally have 120-160 in the OT Bank by now...Haven't broke 30... this year !! And does not look like with the new M&P we will ever get those OT numbers again.
Instead, the company will let the area back up ...Then they will slide 3-10 piece work contractors into the area for 2 days to clean the table. Then rinse and repeat...contractors have to close 7-9 a day to make a living so do the math 10 piecemeals at 7 a day that's 70 tix cleared . Its a stroke of brilliance on the bean counter meter. which is largely why it will be utilized.
The thing that seems to be getting lost amongst us old timers is change is the only constant in this business. you all SHOULD know this by now and understand it. some of you simply don't and that's why your struggling. The new direction is completely new territory for the old bell operations...The new company is no longer a federally regulated utility company. We are now a simple ISP ? Entertainment providers just like the rest. We no longer hold the lofty position that once had us in the same regards as power, mail, utilities ….No now we are a simple ISP and the only thing that counts now? Shareholders earnings and executive earnings as they complete the transformation.
They have ceded to the advent of change, and are looking to find their relevant spot in the new landscape. Someone mentioned here Transport....Yes I too believe that they want to be the largest transport and cloud company on the field. That spells bad news for us antiquated tip and ring jockey's. Sure there are a few bright spots and there are areas outside of mine that have offerings that will keep things moving for another 5 years or so. but then what?
We still have pager duty, not sure where you got no pager duty in the Northwest.
Pager duty has been eliminated up here in the Northwest. SRO’s are calling technicians and creating a call out list of volunteers.
Just got the word in mid-atlantic, no more standby pay. All callouts to be screened by SRO before it comes to tech to try and eliminate callouts. No overtime unless pre approved by SRO. No more pulling futures in MAX without SRO approval.
Correction: No overtime unless approved
Utah is on overtime unless approved by manager.
MN pager duty is ending Monday , been given no word how this will work , asked for our home phone numbers so they can call us at home. Said it is for budget cuts and future success of the company.
New Mexico, some areas no longer have outside techs on call. Some RCA's combined under one on call where they used to have 2 or 3 ( one in each RCA). To few of people left so we are getting into the 2nd week all the time so they are trying to get at least 4 or 5 people on a rotation. Some of the areas had a COT on call by themselves all the Time so many hit the over 180 days. Rumor is the company is trying to cut pager budget in half.