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AT&T Actions Totally Inadequate, Thousands Remain Exposed to Fraud |
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Wednesday, 29 August 2007 |
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at$t revealed this week that Legacy T personal information belonging to thousands of employees and retirees was compromised when a laptop was stolen from a contractor. The stolen laptop that the contractor was walking around with included sensitive personal information associated with our benefits plan. The company is now offering to pay for credit monitoring services for employees and retiree’s who were affected by the security breach. Has at$t lost its mind? Do they think our silence and outrage can be swept under the carpet?
Let’s demand that at$t brings back all Pension Service Center work to the bargaining unit. In addition, ALL work currently being outsourced and contracted out should be returned to the bargaining unit to ensure the integrity of all sensitive information. If they will do this, then "MAYBE" we can start believing the company’s assurances that the security of employees, retiree’s and consumer’s personal information will be protected. This breach of security would “NEVER” have happened if it were still done in-house.
When secure information was handled and assigned to occupational employees of the bargaining unit, it was reviewed by full time employees only and never left the premises of at$t. Now it seems that the company has lost control of our vital information and I believe that the company is incapable of identifying who actually has access to these records at any given time. at$t should be held accountable for these actions and we should all be outraged that they put more importance on cheap labor while they ignore us and place us in jeopardy on a daily basis. They care little for employees and consumers as they greedily race to the bottom of the wage scale. I am still not sure if our information was stolen from here or abroad and at$t still has not given the Union a date when the theft occurred, but the company certainly has tried to deflect their responsibility by saying it was stolen from a contractor. Who hired the contractor?
This is becoming all too common and we must take action now to prevent this from re-occurring. Giving employee’s, retiree’s and consumers one free year of credit monitoring is totally inadequate and it is like putting a band-aid on a person that has just had open-heart surgery. We can no longer accept the Company’s mismanagement of sensitive personal information; it is inexcusable that the company can be so blasé about an incident that can cause irreparable harm to people for years to come. Ask your managers what they are doing to ensure that all personal information is being properly protected and demand that they return these duties and responsibilities to the bargaining unit. Only then will we be assured that the security we expect will be adhered to.
In Unity,
Roy Hegenbart
President/Local 3250 |
