Wednesday, June 23, 2010

CWA: Comcast-NBC Merger Bad for Workers and Consumers

Members of NABET-CWA picket outside the NBC network-owned station in Washington, D.C., during “Meet the Press” last month.

by James Parks, Jun 21, 2010




The proposed merger between cable TV giant Comcast and NBC-Universal (NBCU) would lead to job cuts, reduce competition in the cable industry and restrict consumer access to online video content, a senior leader of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) told lawmakers.

On top of all that, Comcast has a long record of violating workers’ rights, CWA Vice President James Weitkamp told a field hearing of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month. After its last big merger, with AT&T Broadband in 2002, Comcast immediately set about crushing AT&T’s unions, he said. Comcast also pays its workers about a third less in wages and benefits than unionized telecom companies.