Verizon strike: Union battle line after Wisconsin | Ari Paul

Verizon project managers to fill in for Union workers on strike have to cross the picket lines. Video: Darren Durlach/Boston Globe via YouTube

Outside Verizons lower Manhattan headquarters, crowds of nearly 200 strikers are encamped – many of them with their entire families, as construction workers from the World Trade Center site next door comes by to wish you good luck. Some strikers listened to Union officers gives speech on the bull Horn when someone motioned to workers ' compensation comes back from their lunch break: cries of "scab" pierced the air.

The company is fighting back vigorously. Manhattan judge ruled simply that only a specified number of strikers to picket a company Web site: between 6 and 50, depending on the size of the location, public radio reported.

Workers in telecommunications giant has been on the picket line before – for example during four months long strike in 1989 in predecessor company, NYNEX. But the current operation – 45,000 members of the communications workers of America and international brotherhood of electrical workers from New England to Virginia walked off the job on August 7 – comes at a critical time. A strike in a high profile company that is so profitable even asks for extreme worker concessions is a game which the unions hope could win wider sympathy around the country. Even fought unions to turn the national media coverage Wisconsin of protests in the electoral process victories; the public may not be willing to support labour.

A year ago told CWA leaders its members to prepare for a strike. The company claimed $ 1 billion in concessions – amounts to a salary and benefits cut at $ 20,000 per employee and the abolition of pensions for new workers. cwa District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton said that the company also was demanding pensioners pay $ 6,000 annually for their medical services "after the given promises that it would be free". This, Union leaders point out, despite a $ 19bn profit in the last four years. Verizon's argument is that all the profits come from non-union wireless operation, while unionised forms wireline end is a bulky, money-losing dinosaur.

But the company's claim to control? Cable-based maintenance is actually the backbone of the wireless service. Mobile phone carriers (Verizon and other carriers) uses copper infrastructure is built and maintained by Union workers. This same network also supports landlines for companies that still rely on them, and alarm systems for offices and housing. "AT&T, MetroPCS, the lease it from us," says Mike Nixon, who has worked as a field engineer with the company for 23 years. "Verizon profits no matter what."

Strikers say it on corporate greed. Verizon actually started a new venture, Verizon Wireless when it went to the mobile phone business – in order to avoid new workforce from automatically fed into the negotiation agent device. 2007 meeting minutes (A) by American rights at work (pdf) said Verizon has "maintained non-union divisions of interfering with its workers ' freedom of Association" Although the company "could choose a high-road model for investing in its employees and still compete in a rapidly changing industry.

CWA'S Shelton said he received hundreds of e-mails a day from non-union workers in support of the strike. More inspiring, he added, was to CWA picketers have protests outside Verizon Wireless stores and on several occasions, low wages, retail workers at these sites welcome protesters and inquire about how they can join the Union.

"People are angry," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of workforce education research on Cornell University's School of industrial and labour relations. In New Yorkis CWA succeeded strikes against telephone company in the past. In 1989, it fought off cutbacks to healthcare services and later secured work breaks for members, Bronfenbrenner says.

Trade unions in Wisconsin trøde, they were at a turning point, but the Republicans held their majority in the Senate, State by winning four of six recall election this week. People are generally a far from rushing to sign their Union cards. But when Verizons service is eventually halted by the strike, more and more people will be aware of. Few are likely to be sympathetic to Verizon.

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BT and BSkyB lead broadband battle

BT enjoys the former becomes national Telecoms monopoly in the battle to dominate the broadband market. Photo: Tim Ireland/PA

The race to connect UK households to broadband network is won by just two operators, leaving a lot of competitors behind.

BT BSkyB group and surging ahead of rivals, according to a number of updates this week from the major broadband providers. The former national monopoly capitalised on its large telephone customer base to pull in an extra 141,000 broadband subscribers in the last three months.

The increase saw BT take 60% of all new customers during the quarter, consolidating its share of 20 m UK broadband home at 29%.

Sky, which reports tomorrow is forecast shows an increase of 154,000 home, after having converted several of his 10 m TV customers, and thanks to a new strategy for chasing only broad band subscribers.

However, lost Virgin Media, the second largest supplier with 21.5% of the UK's 20 m broadband-connected households, 18,600 customers after a lot of students switched their service for the summer.

TalkTalk, which was created in 2009 because carphone Warehouse internet merged its activities with Tiscali and now controls 21% of the market, lost 27,000 customers in the quarter. The company has concentrated on improving loyalty through better customer service rather than chasing new business.

Of mobile enterprises with largest broadband following, Orange has lost approximately 80,000 customers since last year, and O2 will remain flat.

' Course for the Cloud and BT, have an existing customer base, a captive audience is a huge competitive advantage in selling in other products, "says Chris Williams, of price comparer Simplifydigital.

Talktalks share price increased by 3 p to 141 p as it announced half-year results, after investors saw progress in improving customer experience and a promised £ 40 m in cost savings from the merger.

Calls to its ancillary services has almost halved in a year and three-quarters of new clients are connected within 20 days, compared with half six months earlier.

Mark James said "BT has benefited from the turmoil on the TalkTalk," at a mediator Liberum capital. But he warned: "as the market continues to grow, the sky is taking share from BT and Virgin Media. And as TalkTalk gets its act together, we want to see people make their decision based on price and BTS copper is pricey. "

BT reported a revenue dip 5% and a 20% increase in profit before tax in the three months to June 30. Its Global Services division, services business clients, won the £ 1.6bn of business in the quarter, including its biggest ever contract with the Brazilian post office.

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"It is time to do battle with astroturfing"

Each month more evidence immensely up, suggesting that online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who are not what they seem.

Anonymity of the web provides businesses and Governments golden opportunities to run astroturf operations: fake grassroots campaigns, create the impression that large numbers of people demanding or opposing specific policies. This deception is most likely to occur where companies or Governments interests come into conflict with public interests. For example, there are a long history of tobacco companies, which create astroturf groups to fight attempts to regulate them.

After I wrote about online astroturfing in December, I was contacted by a whistleblower. He was part of a commercial team, hired to internet infest forums and comment threads on behalf of serves corporate clients, promote their causes and argue with who opposed them.

Like the other members of the team asked he as disinterested members of the public. Or to be more accurate as a crowd disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression, there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments. I will reveal more about what he told me when I am finished with the survey I'm working on.

Now it seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed. E-mails obtained by the political hackers from U.S. cyber-security firm called HBGary Federal propose to a remarkable technological Arsenal inserted drown out the voices of real people.

As the Daily Kos has reported shows the e-mail messages that:

• Companies now use "persona management software", which multiplies efforts each astroturfer, create the impression that there is strong support for what a corporation or Government is trying to do.

• This software creates all online furniture a real person would possess: a name, e-mail accounts, Web pages and social media. In other words, it automatically generates what is similar to authentic profiles, makes it difficult to tell the difference between a virtual robot and a real commentator.

• False accounts can be kept up to date by automatically reposting or create links to content generated elsewhere, reinforcing the impression that its account holders are real and active.

• Human can then be assigned these astroturfers "pre-aged" accounts to create a back story, suggests that they have been busy linking and retweeting months. No one would presume that they came in on stage for the first time a moment ago, with the sole purpose of attacking an article about climate science or argue against new controls on salt in junk food.

• With some clever use of social media, astroturfers can, in vagtselskabs words, "makes it appear as if a persona actually was at a Conference and introduce themselves to key individuals as part of the exercise … There are a number of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to fictitious personas. "

The most disturbing revelation is perhaps this. Us Air Force supply for companies to provide it with persona management software, which will perform the following tasks:

a. create "10 personas per user, full of light, history, supporting details and cyber forms which are technically, culturally and geographically contiguous … Personas should be able to show the origin of almost any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. "

(b). automatically provide its astroturfers with "randomly selected IP addresses through which can get access to the Internet" (an IP address is the number which identifies a person's computer), and these are changed every day "hide the existence of the action". The software should also mix up astroturfers ' web traffic with "traffic from the multitudes of users from outside your organization. This traffic blending modes offers excellent coverage and powerful spanner. "

c. create static "IP addresses" for each persona, enables various astroturfers "look like the same person over time". It should also allow "organisations that frequent the same site of service often too easy to switch IP addresses to resemble common users as opposed to one organization."

Software like this has the potential to destroy the Internet as a forum for constructive debate. It threatens the concept of online democracy. Comment threads about issues with large commercial consequences are already being destroyed by what look like armies of organised ogres – as you can sometimes see on guardian.co.uk.

The Internet is a wonderful gift, but it is also a bonanza for corporate lobbyists, viral marketers and Government spin doctors, which can operate in cyberspace without regulation, accountability, or fear of detection. So let me repeat the question, I have added in previous articles, and which has yet to be answered satisfactory: what should we do to fight these tactics?

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