Verizon is a telecom behemoth, with revenues of $32 billion and profits of $4.3 billion in the first three months of this year.
But like most corporations these days, Verizon employs as few workers as possible, and contracts out as much of its work as possible. One example of that is found in this story in Wednesday's Albany Times Union, headlined "Immigrant labor brings Verizon FiOS to Guilderland" (get around the paywall by searching the headline on Google, then clicking on the result).
The TU sent its best feature writer, Paul Grondahl, out to a suburban town to do a featurey story about the crew doing the ditch-digging for Verizon's fiber-optic Internet service, which it is slowly expanding in New York, and only in the best neighborhoods.
Featurey like this:
From sunrise to sunset these men toil, anonymous souls bent to their task. It is a grinding low-tech labor that will bring new high-speed broadband Internet technology to affluent homeowners. Aside from the featurey flourishes, there are plenty of interesting facts about this work -- the work itself, and who does it and who won't, which is clearly related to how much they are paid by a subcontractor to a contractor to Verizon.More, below.