Together with their wired divisions they vociferously denounced any public money assigned to private city-wide networks, even lobbying for laws banning it.
Analyst Gregory Miller of Rodman & Renshaw thinks unloading the troubled cable and wiring division could raise the stock price $2 to $3 per share.
As we worked our way through all five seasons of "The Wire," this division became more apparent.
The company says its traditional wire line division is struggling, while the union says Verizon's overall business, including Verizon Wireless, is thriving.
The strike involves Verizon's wire lines division, which include its traditional land lines to homes and business as well as FiOS.
Unlike Verizon Wireless, a joint venture in which Verizon is the majority owner, the wire lines division is heavily unionized, with the Communications Workers representing 35,000 employees and the Electrical Workers 10,000.
But the company has repeatedly said it needs to rein in costs in its wire lines division because it has lost business to wireless companies, to Internet companies like Vonage and Skype and to cable television companies, many of them nonunion, like Comcast and Time Warner.
"I have yet to see a market where penetration has stopped growing," said Robert J. Barish, Verizon's senior vice president and the chief financial officer of its wired communications division.
"Boeing from the get-go was wired into all divisions of government on this project," said Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, one of several advocacy groups that was critical of the tanker project.
SI 9am: From our Reuters news wire: A Bulgarian third division match was abandoned after only four minutes when quick injuries left an already depleted team with only six players on the pitch, local media reported.
