AT&T Cloaks Itself in Economic Crisis, Communications Workers Call Bluff

In what could act as a signal to other big union companies, AT&T is playing on hard times to demand a raft of concessions. The telecommunications giant and its workers are battling over who will carry the burden for health care: AT&T wants to as much as triple union workers’ cost for coverage. Workers currently pay between $1100 and $1500 a year.

Bargaining continued while Communications Workers (CWA) members kept working after their contract expired April 4. Talks with the company, which booked a $12.9 billion profit last year, have slowed to a crawl.

The union, with about 110,000 workers at AT&T, announced that 88 percent of voting members authorized a strike in late March. The last negotiations, in 2004, led to a four-day strike.

The company has refused to bargain over health care for retirees, and CWA expects it to try unilaterally to hike their costs. Local 1298 in Connecticut won an unfair labor practice in late April over the company’s refusal to hand over information.

“They told us they could sweeten the pot if we got rid of the retirees,” said Bill Henderson, Local 1298 president. “We’re not going to put these people under the bus.

“This is not a fight for just us. This is a fight for the auto workers, for the Teamsters. For everyone that has a job.”

WORK TO RULE

CWA is protesting AT&T’s takeaway demands with a nationwide mobilization of rallies, workplace events, and a work-to-rule campaign that asks members to “comply with all rules and procedures the company has ever taught you.”

Workers are religiously following safety rules and ensuring that every equipment inspection called for in company protocol is completed.

With their contract expired, workers are taking more aggressive action, too. Local 9404 in San Rafael, California, carried out a one-day grievance strike in mid-April after two stewards were singled out for refusing overtime. Carol Whichard, the local president, said the company backtracked on the stewards’ discipline. Local officials report that installation and service appointments remain two to three weeks behind schedule.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis joined hundreds of CWA members at an April 24 rally in downtown Los Angeles that clogged city streets. And in one notably customer-friendly action, CWA activists in Texas handed out flyers showing how customers can get around AT&T’s automated answering systems and quickly talk to live representatives.

CWA President Larry Cohen reminded members in a nationwide bargaining update broadcast online that the union has a $375 million strike fund. Members and local officers say a strike is still unlikely at this point.

WE’RE ALL AUTO WORKERS

AT&T says it must unload its obligation to pay for retirees’ health care or end up like near-bankrupt GM and Chrysler.

The union howled at that comparison, pointing out the company’s billions in 2008 profits, CEO Randall Stephenson’s 22 percent wage increase, and the $9.5 billion paid out to shareholders last year. AT&T is again forecast to post healthy profits in 2009.

“The company is wrapping itself in the overall economic crisis, but they’re not part of it,” Eveler said, adding that AT&T has gained business from economic stimulus funds aimed at extending broadband service to rural areas.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

Local 1298 chief steward Pete Mazzadra, a cable repairman, noted that AT&T top executives receive lifetime family medical and dental care. Louie Rocha, an organizer with Local 9423, said members aren’t backing down.

Rocha said CWA wants AT&T to contribute to a fund that will advocate for broader health care coverage, as its competitor Verizon did last summer.

“If AT&T wants to follow through with its auto industry comparison, let’s see a comparison of imported auto costs—where in every other country of origin there is universal health care, paid for with broad-based public funding, not through production costs,” Cohen said.

But if government doesn’t solve the health care mess, Rocha said, CWA can avoid the fate of the UAW only by spreading high standards throughout its industry, which is increasingly populated by non-union cable companies.

“Through the years we’ve traded raises for good benefits,” he said, “but it’s foolish to think the company’s not going to be affected when the competition doesn’t have these costs. That’s a burden on the union to organize the cable industry.”

TAKE, BUT NO GIVE

Bargaining is occurring simultaneously at five locations around the country. According to one bargaining report, AT&T’s wage offer was 6 percent over five years.

The company is also demanding a catch-all service technician position, and outraged members by floating a proposal that would force them to work alone in utility holes.

“Any confined space is dangerous,” said Pete Garrick, a technician who worked with two Local 1298 members who died in 1989 in a Connecticut utility hole. “I don’t understand how they think one guy could ever work in a hole alone. Anything could go wrong.”

AT&T is also trying to eliminate pensions for new hires and get rid of an earlier agreement that allows CWA to organize at its non-union facilities with card check.

At the top of CWA’s priorities is a wage-and-standards bridge for technicians who install combined television and internet service. Although they perform similar work to traditional landline techs, their top pay is $11 an hour less, their contract protections are weaker, and their jobs are temporary and precarious. The union wants them to be permanent employees.

The company is cutting 12,000 jobs this year, including 5,000 unionized workers, as its revenue from home-based landlines dipped by 5 percent at the end of last year. The union is seeking to ensure that laid-off workers are placed in AT&T’s growing TV and wireless divisions. The work is similar, because mobile signals must travel over landline wires.

As layoffs spiral and the company’s arrogance rankles, anger is growing at AT&T. CWA has said it could call a strike “at any moment of our choosing.”

“People are losing their houses—they’ve got nothing left to lose,” Rocha said. “The executives still have their stock incentives. Their pipeline is secure. That’s got the hair on the back of our necks raised, and we’re going to wear them down.”

Correction: The article originally reported that Local 9503 in Southern California carried out a one-day grievance strike in mid-April. Local 9404 in fact led the strike.