Verizon said it is adding more than 1,000 jobs in its nationwide retail stores. It is specifically looking for new retail employees who embrace technology early on – such as B. Gamer.
Verizon has approximately 1,500 corporate stores, but when dealer-operated stores are included in the count, it has approximately 7,000 stores total.
Steve Van Dinter, Director of Communications at Verizon, said, “These are all new positions and apply to our branches.”
He added, “Also, we haven’t had any store closures or job cuts over the past year due to the pandemic.”
Jeff Moore, Principal at Wave7 Research, questioned Verizon’s accounting. He noted that Verizon was moving retail jobs to online customer service centers in early 2021 and offering severance packages to some retail employees.
RELATED: Verizon is moving retail jobs and offering severance pay to some employees
“The retail reorganization that Verizon made in January has eliminated many indirect positions related to account functions and with some managers suddenly managing two stores,” said Moore. “That was certainly a decrease in body size.”
Wave7 Research also found that the percentage of Verizon retail stores done online has increased sharply over the past year due to the pandemic. “That said, we see almost all of Verizon’s stores open now,” said Moore.
Beth Allen, communications director for Communications Workers of America, said in an email to Fierce, “Our research team has looked at the [Verizon] Job postings and found that nearly 60% of job advertisements are for part-time jobs. “
Allen added, “The employees at Verizon Wireless stores are under tremendous pressure to generate revenue and their earnings can be unpredictable. Due to the ongoing anti-union campaign by Verizon Wireless, employees have not been given a free and fair choice to join a union and therefore have no say in their working conditions. ”
Executive compensation
Verizon’s announcement of 1,000 new retail jobs will be made shortly before the annual general meeting tomorrow.
One of the items to be voted on is a proposal to limit payments for gold parachutes to Verizon executives. The proposal was made by Jack Cohen, chairman of the Association of BellTel Retirees.
Speaking to Fierce, Cohen said, “76 percent of all of our members own Verizon. It is not to our advantage that the company is going under. We want to see it successful. But you have these runaway, gigantic severance packages in an environment where people wait hours for boxes of groceries. We’re just saying that limits should be set. “
Recently, both AT&T and General Electric held their proxy voting and voted to reject proposed executive compensation packages, which is pretty rare.
For tomorrow’s vote, the proposal by the BellTel retirees will be supported by the Institutional Shareholder Services organization.
Survey of the number of employees
In the meantime, people are asking telecommunications companies about their promises of more jobs.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that T-Mobile’s workforce fell over the past year. T-Mobile reported 75,000 full-time and part-time equivalents at the end of 2020, around 5,000 fewer than when the merger with Sprint was completed in mid-2020.
When T-Mobile advocated buying Sprint, its executives, led by then-CEO John Legere, repeatedly claimed that the company would be “job positive” from day one.
The company’s current CEO, Mike Sievert, told the WSJ that Covid has dampened hiring and that the company currently has 6,000 open positions.
RELATED: T-Mobile Adds 260,000 Net Postpaid Accounts in Q1 2021
At the same time, T-Mobile recently raised its “merger synergy” estimates from $ 2.8 billion to $ 3.1 billion this year. Granted, merger synergies don’t necessarily mean layoffs. Other factors save T-Mobile money, such as: B. the shutdown of unnecessary sprint towers.
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