Fate of AT&T Labor Talks Still Uncertain as Contracts Expire Soon
There are still many issues yet to be resolved as of Friday as labor negotiations between the wireline AT&T and the unions continued, said the Communications Workers of America. Four contracts covering 40,000 union workers were set to expire Saturday. AT&T claimed it’s well prepared for a potential strike.
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It’s too early to say if there would be an agreement before the contract expires, said Candice Johnson, communications director of CWA on Friday. Many issues are still on the table, she said, noting these are four separate negotiations. The union members authorized the strike earlier. The two sides continue to bargain and the general issues are wages, benefits, pension and work rules, a spokesman for AT&T said. AT&T expects both parties to work “conscientiously and in good faith toward a suitable agreement,” he said. That said, the telco is prepared to continue its services if there’s a strike, he said. The company has been planning for more than two years to handle a potential work stoppage, he said. “We have a substantial contingency workforce of well-trained managers and vendors in place,” he said. The parties started bargaining Feb. 29 for contracts that cover employees in both network and call center roles, he said. The union employees are from the company’s wireline division in the East, Midwest, West and Legacy.
CWA criticized the telco’s outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, the group’s vice president said during a national AT&T call late Thursday. Like many large global companies, AT&T needs to do some outsourcing to meet its customer demands in a competitive industry, the company spokesman said.
The shift in the business is driving the shift in employee base, the AT&T spokesman said. He emphasized that the company continues to hire in the growing parts of its business, most notably in retail stores and video installation. In the last six months the company has hired around 325 U-Verse technicians and retail employees in Illinois and it’s currently hiring 80 more, he said. He claimed the average AT&T network technician covered under these contracts makes $133,000 in wages and benefits; the average AT&T call center representative makes $107,000. Healthy growth from AT&T’s U-Verse video (U-Verse TV and bundled satellite) services is helping the company to counter increasing competition in the business, Zacks Investment analysts said.
Meanwhile, AT&T plans to cut 97 Illinois jobs in its construction and engineering department, according to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union local 21. The company’s reducing the number of jobs in parts of its shrinking wireline business, the AT&T spokesman said. He claimed the company has lost more than 40 percent of its wired access line customers (over 27 million lines) in the past five years as consumers increasingly cut the cord and go wireless only.