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According to published news reports and internal announcements, AT&T plans to cut 12,000 jobs next year. The last time AT&T announced a lay-off this large was in early 2007, following the Bell South acquisition, when it eliminated 13,000 workers. The company also got rid of 10,000 positions after acquiring AT&T Corp. in 2005. In April 2008, AT&T announced 4,650 cuts which mostly impacted our brothers and sisters at SBC, Pac Tel, Ameritech, BellSouth and SNET.
Currently there are over 150,000 occupational employees spread across AT&T with only a fraction of them employed at Legacy T. In 2008 AT&T had declared 3 lay-offs at Legacy T which impacted 139 bargaining unit members nationwide and 21 bargaining unit members in Local 3250’s jurisdiction. These announced cuts by AT&T may be part of a nationwide contraction that most likely claimed 330,000 U.S. jobs last month, the biggest decline since 1982, according to a survey of economists by Bloomberg. On the other hand the company may be jumping on the job cut band wagon because it sees an opportunity to chop its payroll and increase its profit margins at the expense of its customers and employees. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls rose to 4.09 million in the week ended Nov. 22, the most since December 1982, the Labor Department said today in Washington. We have pointed out to the company at numerous meetings that they are operating at a critically low level of occupational personnel to meet their productivity and performance requirements. We all know how overloaded the bargaining unit workforce is and it was just a matter of time before AT&T’s customers would feel the crunch. This has not halted AT&T’s past short-term profit driven decisions to reduce employee levels in the Bargaining Unit. With this current planned lay-off announcement, it is clear the company is still addicted to running the company for short term gains only. Fortunately AT&T cannot lay-off any regular full time employees until they have given the Union 60 days notice as prescribed by the Warn Act and the CWA/AT&T Contract. Our contract also includes a Job Offer Guarantee (JOG) which mandates that any bargaining unit employee declared surplus must be offered a job at AT&T before they can be laid off. At this time the Union has not been notified of a scheduled lay-off at any of the bargaining units. We are attempting to determine what impact this reduction announcement will have on Legacy T and all of the AT&T bargaining units across the country. We will also pursue the impact this announcement will have on the management and contractor workforce. When we obtain any new information we will share it with our members. In unity there is strength. Roy Hegenbart
President
CWA Local 3250 |
