Microsoft’s Strategies

Re “Game’s Not Over, Microsoft,” editorial, June 26: It is gratifying to see The Times report the truth about Microsoft’s continued pursuit of predatory monopolistic strategies. Microsoft has nothing but contempt for any view that challenges its machinations, and uses its considerable legal and public relations resources to advertise and promote its agenda, which deceives only those who have no knowledge of Microsoft’s long history of anticompetetive, predatory and intimidating practices.

What kind of corporate citizen is Microsoft? Despite the garnering of billions of dollars from products that cost next to nothing to produce and yield gross profits that only a predatory monopoly could achieve, Microsoft denies its part-time employees (over 5,000 of them) the same benefits it gives its permanent employees, even though some have worked for more than 2 1/2 years (Business, June 27). Its new policy, effective July 1, requiring part-time workers “to leave the company for 31 days” after one year and completing an assignment is a deliberate attempt to evade the IRS rules and “other regulations that require employers to pay benefits to long-term employees.”

IVAN JOHN MIHAIL

Ventura