Windstream Corporation – What’s Wrong in America

Windstream Corporation (NYSE: WIN) is certainly not alone in its efforts to thwart the badly economic recovery in America. It’s pretty much business as usual in the corporate world – just as it seems to be business as usual in the financial industry and politics as usual in Washington.

In late September the shareholders of D & E Communications of Ephrata, Pennsylvania voted to approve a merger with Windstream. Each shareholder would be able to exchange D & E shares for .65 Windstream shares plus $5.00.

Windstream Corporation of Little Rock, Arkansas, came into existence in July 2006 when Little Rock’s Alltel Corporation (since purchased by Verizon) spun off its wireline phone division and merged it with Valor Communications Group, Inc. of Irving Texas. In 2007 Windstream acquired CT Communications Inc. of Concord, North Carolina. What followed were layoffs in Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas and North Carolina.

Then there was the September announcement that Windstream would reduce its workforce by 5% by the end of 2009. Oh, yeah – about D & E. Of the 490 employees in Pennsylvania, 290 are out the door, or will be soon. Two of Windstreams Internet Data Centers are being moved from Little Rock to Pennsylvania and, while the company has said no one in Little Rock will lose their jobs, they probably should be working their job contact list.

Windstream has, of course, performed other cost-cutting measures like moving call center operations to India.

What’s Wrong in America?

Corporations no longer care about being community citizens. Oh, sure, they pressure their employees to make payroll deductible contributions to this charity or that charity. And they call that corporate citizenship. They may even put on t-shirts and join some walk or run for some worthy cause. But, all the time, they are buying and selling other companies and moving jobs overseas.

Why do they do this? You know the answer already. They want to impress the stock analysts. So here’s my thought: you cannot be a good corporate citizen when you put people out of work to please someone on Wall Street. But I forgot. It was favorable thoughts from Wall Street that led to banks allowing Windstream to re-wire its loans so it could buy more companies and lay off more workers.

So, what can we do to correct this situation? HellifIknow!