AT&T Southeast Strike Nears One Month, With California and Nevada on Brink of Walkout

UPDATE: On September 15, CWA announced tentative agreements with both AT&T Southeast and AT&T West. Workers at AT&T Southeast returned to work on September 16. Members will still need to vote on both deals.

Seventeen thousand AT&T workers in the Southeast have been on strike since August 16. They may be joined soon by another 8,500 workers at AT&T in California and Nevada.

Workers in nine Southeast states walked out on an unfair labor practice strike four weeks ago over accusations the telecom giant has been bargaining in bad faith, including engaging in surface bargaining, not sending representatives with real authority to the table, and reneging on commitments to bargain to lower health care costs. Their contract expired August 3.

“They got people at the table who can’t make the decisions—they’re just there,” said Clarence Adams, a wire technician with Communications Workers Local 3611 outside Raleigh, North Carolina.

The strike includes technicians, call center workers, and others who build and maintain the AT&T network in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

AT&T pulled in $24 billion in profits in 2023.

TWO-TIER

While the strike is over unfair labor practices, CWA bargaining reports indicate the company and union remain at odds over issues including health care costs, forced overtime, and wages for its second tier of technicians.

The company claimed it had made a “final offer” on September 4, distributing info directly to members, which CWA characterized as direct dealing and more evidence of AT&T’s bad faith bargaining. Although AT&T labeled their offer as “final,” bargaining has continued since.

Two-tier pay is a major issue in negotiations. Twenty years ago, AT&T created a lower tier of installation and repair technicians, known as “wire technicians” in the Southeast and “premises technicians” (“prem techs”) in other regions, to shift work away from its “core” technicians. These wire and prem techs now make up one-third of the company’s technicians across the country.

CWA is pushing to bump wire techs up the wage scale, which would result in an immediate boost of $7,000 a year for some, on top of the 5.75 percent general wage increase proposed by CWA in the first year of the contract. CWA was proposing a compounded 21 percent wage increase for all workers across the four-year contract as of September 7, while AT&T was offering 17.9 percent.

RAISING KIDS THROUGH FACETIME

Even before negotiations began, many AT&T CWA members were already frustrated with the company, citing forced overtime, random performance metrics, and management disrespect. "AT&T will send us an email saying 'Your Family Matters', and on the same day our supervisor will tell us we can't go home to our families at the end of our shifts; instead, we have to keep picking up jobs until there are none left," the union wrote in an August bargaining report.

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Work-life balance is a major sticking point for wire techs in particular, whose schedules don’t provide consecutive days off and give them only one weekend free per month—not to mention long, unpredictable days. “They come in at 8 o’clock in the morning, they don’t know if they’re going to get home until 8 o’clock at night or 11 o’clock at night,” CWA District 3 President Richard Honeycutt told The Valley Labor Report. “There’s no work-life balance for them at all. They have to raise their kids, enjoy their T-ball game or dance through Facetime.” The union is pushing to reduce forced overtime.

CWA says that poor conditions for wire techs leads to high turnover and short staffing, which hurts customers, too. “This job demands a lot,” said Adams, who moved to North Carolina from Brooklyn, where he was part of the successful, years-long campaign to organize a union at Cablevision,now Altice. “Trying to hold on to good quality people is very hard—people are not being paid enough, and you don’t have the work-life balance. Guys are coming home sometimes three hours after their shift.”

A CWA survey of wire techs at AT&T Southeast found that 65 percent had applied for a job outside the company in the past year.

Health insurance is also a big issue. A CWA analysis of the company’s September 4 proposal reported that family health insurance premiums would go up 27 percent over the course of the contract to $532 a month. AT&T’s proposal also includes higher deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. CWA is pushing to significantly lower premiums and other health care costs. According to the union, “over the life of the contract, CWA’s proposal would save a family over $9,000 in premium costs alone.”

The union also proposed to cut the number of observations of call center workers in half to take some of the stress off them.

LONGEST EVER

This year’s walkout is already the longest strike ever by Southeast AT&T workers, eclipsing the 22-day strike in 1983 by 675,000 AT&T workers nationally.

CWA members nationally have leafleted outside dozens of AT&T Mobility stores to inform the public about the strike.

Meanwhile, in District 9, CWA members voted down the tentative agreement covering 8,500 AT&T workers in California and Nevada, with 58 percent voting no. Negotiators are back at the bargaining table there, but reported on September 12 that the company was still not budging on better wages, retroactive pay, and improvements to working conditions for prem techs.

The CWA executive board authorized a strike at AT&T West earlier this week. CWA President Claude Cummings could call workers out at any time.

Sign a petition supporting striking AT&T Southeast workers here. Donate to the strike fund here.