Telegrams from the Business Manager
These are not updates. They are perspectives. Each telegram is a written reflection on the realities we face as a Local. What's working, what isn't, and where we need to move.
Telegram 005:
From Public Utility to Portfolio Asset
5-21-26
For decades, the telecommunications industry was built around a simple understanding: reliable communication infrastructure mattered. It mattered to families. It mattered to businesses. It mattered to national security. Most importantly, it mattered to the communities that depended on it every single day.
That understanding is disappearing.
Across the country, telecommunications infrastructure is increasingly being treated not as a public necessity or a long-term investment in America’s future, but as another financial instrument to be packaged, leveraged, diversified, and eventually sold to the next buyer. Fiber systems, copper networks, towers, switching facilities, data infrastructure, fleets, and even the workforce itself are being viewed through the lens of quarterly returns and portfolio management rather than service, reliability, craftsmanship, and public trust.
The modern corporate playbook is becoming impossible to ignore.
Investment firms and large capital groups buy telecommunications assets, restructure operations, reduce labor costs, outsource critical work, sell physical infrastructure, lease it back, divide business units into tradable pieces, and aggressively chase short-term efficiencies designed to maximize financial performance. The language is always polished. “Optimization.” “Transformation.” “Operational streamlining.” “Shareholder value.” “Portfolio diversification.”
But workers and consumers experience it differently.
Consumers experience longer outages, declining customer service, delayed repairs, aging infrastructure, and companies that feel increasingly disconnected from the communities they serve. They see rising bills while service quality stagnates or declines. They struggle to speak to local representatives who understand their area because decision-making has been centralized, outsourced, or automated away.
Workers experience something even more personal.
They watch decades of institutional knowledge disappear through layoffs, contracting, attrition, and early retirements. They watch skilled union careers replaced with temporary labor models and subcontracting chains designed to reduce accountability. They see fewer apprenticeships, fewer opportunities for younger workers to build stable middle-class lives, and fewer companies willing to invest in long-term workforce development.
At the same time, the physical infrastructure itself becomes secondary to the financial engineering surrounding it.
In many cases, the real value is no longer viewed as the network’s reliability or the quality of service it provides to customers. The value becomes the asset itself. The land, the towers, the fiber routes, the real estate, the lease agreements, the debt structure, and the future resale potential. Entire systems are bought and sold with the mindset of investors trading positions rather than stewards maintaining critical infrastructure.
Telecommunications is not supposed to function like a disposable commodity.
These networks are the backbone of modern society. They carry emergency communications, support hospitals, connect schools, enable commerce, and increasingly determine whether rural communities survive or fall further behind. Every year, Americans become more dependent on telecommunications infrastructure while the industry itself becomes more detached from the people it serves.
That disconnect has consequences.
Deferred maintenance becomes normalized. Staffing levels shrink below sustainable levels. Experienced technicians are stretched thinner and thinner. Contractors are expected to do more work faster and cheaper. Safety margins tighten. Local knowledge disappears. The pressure to produce numbers on spreadsheets outweighs the pressure to build resilient systems that will still function ten or twenty years from now.
And through it all, workers are often told to simply “adapt” to whatever the next restructuring initiative may be.
But this is not simply about nostalgia for the past. It is not resistance to change or technology. Telecommunications workers have always adapted. We adapted through copper. Through fiber. Through wireless expansion. Through broadband growth. Through changing technologies and changing customer expectations.
The frustration comes from watching an industry that was once centered around service, skill, and long-term stability increasingly revolve around extraction.
The people building and maintaining these systems understand something many investors never will. Telecommunications infrastructure is not just another line on a balance sheet. It is physical, demanding, essential work that requires experience, accountability, training, and pride. Strong networks are built by skilled workers who know their communities, understand the systems they maintain, and are given the tools and staffing necessary to do the job correctly.
America cannot continue treating critical infrastructure as something to endlessly buy, strip, divide, and resell without consequences.
At some point, the industry must decide what its priorities actually are.
Is the goal to build resilient networks that serve communities for generations? Or is the goal to maximize short-term returns before moving on to the next acquisition?
Is the workforce viewed as a long-term investment in reliability and expertise? Or simply another expense category to reduce?
Are telecommunications companies stewards of critical infrastructure? Or temporary asset managers operating on behalf of distant investment interests?
These are uncomfortable questions, but they are necessary ones.
Because the future of telecommunications should not belong solely to financial models and quarterly earnings reports. It should belong to the workers who build the networks, the communities that rely on them, and the customers who deserve dependable service from infrastructure that has become essential to modern life.
The industry still has time to choose a different path.
That path requires reinvestment in skilled labor, long-term infrastructure planning, apprenticeship programs, accountability, and local service models that value reliability over rapid extraction. It requires leadership willing to think beyond the next quarter and recognize that sustainable systems are built through stability, experience, and trust.
Most of all, it requires remembering that telecommunications is not merely a portfolio asset.
It is public infrastructure. It is community infrastructure. It is human infrastructure.
And it deserves to be treated that way.
In solidarity,
Zachary Taylor
IBEW 723 Business Manager
Telegram 004:
We Don’t Need More Thinkers. We Need More Thinking Doers.
3-27-26
We don’t have a shortage of ideas. If anything, we have the opposite problem. Everyone has a perspective, a plan, a better way things should be done. Sit in any meeting or scroll through anything online and you’ll hear sharp analysis, well-structured arguments, and confident opinions about what needs to happen next.
And yet, very little actually happens.
Because thinking is safe. It feels productive. It sounds productive. You can spend hours breaking down a problem, identifying risks, refining an approach, and walk away feeling like you accomplished something. But nothing has changed. No progress has been made. No ground has been taken. It’s motion without movement, and over time, that becomes a habit.
The trap is subtle. It doesn’t look like avoidance. It looks like diligence. There’s always one more pass to make, one more angle to consider, one more risk to eliminate before moving forward. But that moment, when everything is perfectly clear and completely risk-free, never comes. Waiting for it isn’t discipline. It’s hesitation with better branding.
Real zeal doesn’t live in conversation. It doesn’t show up in how well you can explain a plan or defend an idea. Zeal shows up in movement. It’s the willingness to step forward when things aren’t fully certain, to make a decision when the information isn’t complete, and to act while others are still debating what should be done. Not recklessly, but decisively.
That’s the difference. The people who actually move things forward aren’t the ones who avoid thinking, they’re the ones who don’t stop there. They think with a purpose. They gather what they need, make a call, and go. They expect friction. They expect to adjust. They understand they won’t get everything right the first time, and they move anyway.
Because action creates clarity.
Most people have it backwards. They think clarity comes first, that if they just analyze long enough, they’ll reach a point where the path is obvious. But clarity comes from engaging with reality. It comes from testing, adjusting, and learning in motion. You don’t think your way into perfect understanding, you move your way into it.
And while one group is still refining their plan, the other is already learning from real outcomes. That gap compounds quickly. Momentum builds on one side and disappears on the other. Not because one group is smarter, but because one group is willing to act.
This is where things break down in organizations, teams, and even in our own lives. Problems stick around longer than they should. Opportunities slip by. Not because people don’t know what needs to be done, but because no one takes ownership of doing it. And once that pattern sets in, everything slows down. Decisions get heavier. Action feels riskier. So people think more, and move less.
If we want better outcomes, the standard has to change. Thinking still matters. Good thinking always will. But it can’t be the finish line. It has to be the starting point. We need more people who are willing to carry their thoughts into action, even when it’s not perfect, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when there’s risk involved.
Because execution is what separates those who talk from those who build.
At some point, every situation comes down to a simple reality: nothing changes until someone moves. Not the best idea. Not the most detailed plan. Not the most thoughtful discussion.
Movement.
So think, think well. But don’t stay there. Make the call. Take the step. Adjust as needed.
But move.
In solidarity,
Zachary Taylor
IBEW 723 Business Manager/Financial Secretary
Telegram 003:
Zeal: The Difference Between a Job and a Calling
2-19-26
There is a word we don’t use much anymore. Zeal is energy rooted in belief. It’s the difference between showing up and building something. It’s the difference between punching a clock and protecting a standard.
And right now, across industries and across generations, there’s a growing narrative that “people don’t want to work anymore.” That narrative misses the mark. Workers have not lost the ability to work hard. What many have lost is zeal. Zeal doesn’t thrive in environments where effort feels disconnected from outcome. It doesn’t survive long in systems that feel unstable, impersonal, or transactional. And it certainly doesn’t grow where workers feel disposable.
But the truth is, Zeal has always been the driving force behind union labor. Our wages weren’t negotiated by people going through the motions. Our safety standards weren’t won by apathy. Our contracts weren’t protected by indifference. They were built by men and women who believed the work mattered. Not just the job, the standard. There’s a difference. A job is what you do to get paid. A standard is what you defend so the next worker stands on higher ground.
Zeal is what makes a skilled trade more than labor. It’s pride in craftsmanship. It’s mentoring the apprentice. It’s holding the line when shortcuts are easier. It’s attending meetings when you’re tired. It’s voting. It’s participating. It’s stepping up instead of watching from the sidelines. Zeal is not loud. It is steady. And here’s the uncomfortable part, zeal is contagious, but so is disengagement. If we want a stronger local, a stronger industry, and stronger contracts, we cannot wait for inspiration to arrive from somewhere else. Leadership is not a title. It’s participation. Solidarity is not a slogan. It’s action. No one builds momentum alone.
When members participate by asking questions, volunteering, attending meetings, mentoring new hires, and holding management accountable through the process, standards improve. When members disengage and only participate from the outside, standards erode quietly.
The future of our Local will not be decided by headlines or corporate decisions. It will be decided by whether we approach our trade and our Union with zeal. The belief that what we do matters and that collective effort multiplies strength. We have the skill. We have the contracts. We have the history.
The question is whether we still have the zeal. Let’s build like we do.
In solidarity,
Zachary Taylor
IBEW 723 Business Manager/Financial Secretary
Telegram 002:
When Telecom Forgets What Matters Most
4-21-25
Telecommunications is built on fundamentals: strong infrastructure, skilled labor, and reliable service. But somewhere along the way, corporate leadership has taken its eye off the signal.
These days, executives talk more about ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governance scores, than they do about service calls, safety standards, or broken equipment. Public-facing reports are packed with sustainability goals, recycled buzzwords, and corporate pledges that have little to do with the core mission: delivering dependable communication services to the public.
Let’s be clear: sustainability and ethical governance matter. But in an industry where reliability is everything, ESG has become a convenient distraction. A corporate checklist that allows telecom giants to focus on image over outcomes. While leadership is polishing quarterly reports, workers are out in the field with outdated tools, shrinking crews, and growing pressure.
Instead of investing in training or long-term workforce development, companies are leaning hard into contractor models. Offloading responsibilities to third parties to reduce liability, not to improve service. The result? Lower accountability, weaker continuity, and greater risk for everyone. From field techs to customers to the communities we serve.
Network lines are left exposed. Response times grow longer. Safety corners are cut. And the people doing the work are often the last to be heard.
What gets lost in all this noise is the foundation of the industry itself: skilled labor. Craftsmanship. Institutional knowledge. The ability to problem-solve under pressure, not with a spreadsheet, but with a tool in one hand and years of experience in the other.
We don’t oppose forward thinking. We oppose *empty gestures* and short-term savings that come at the cost of long-term reliability. The telecommunications industry doesn’t need more consultants or clever rebranding. It needs investment in training. It needs full-time jobs with career paths. It needs leadership that understands you can’t subcontract quality and you can’t automate accountability.
At IBEW 723, we believe progress should be measured by how well the job gets done, not by how slick a company looks on paper. And until corporations stop chasing vanity metrics and start prioritizing safe, effective service, we’ll be here to remind them who actually keeps the signal strong.
In solidarity,
Zachary Taylor
IBEW 723 Business Manager/Financial Secretary
Telegram 001:
The Value of a Grievance
3-17-25
Too often, the word “grievance” gets a bad reputation. Misunderstood as a sign of trouble or seen as something only worth filing when someone’s been severely wronged. But the truth is this: a grievance is one of the most powerful tools working people have to hold the line.
Grievances aren’t about being difficult. They’re about accountability. When we enforce our contract, through dialogue, documentation, and yes, sometimes arbitration, we’re not just protecting one worker. We’re protecting the integrity of everything we bargained for at the table. Every time we let a violation slide, we risk setting a new precedent that chips away at what we’ve won together.
It’s also important to remember that a grievance doesn’t have to be combative. Many issues are resolved through conversation and clarity, especially when there’s a pattern of consistency behind our enforcement. The more employers know we take violations seriously, the less likely they are to test boundaries.
If you ever feel unsure about whether something is grievable, that’s what we’re here for. Talk to your Steward or a union officer. There’s no harm in asking, and the only way to protect your rights is to understand and use them.
Solidarity isn’t passive. It takes vigilance, action, and a willingness to speak up. Not just for ourselves, but for those who come after us. That’s the value of a grievance.
In solidarity,
Zachary Taylor
IBEW 723 Business Manager/Financial Secretary
