AT&T "Legacy T" Bargaining Report #7

This weekend we turned our clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time.  What AT&T did with the demands they put across the table today was to try to turn the clocks BACKWARD to Corporate Savings Time.

For twenty years we fought for monitoring language that goes a long way to protecting our members against secret monitoring and discipline.  The Company had the nerve to show up at the table today with a proposal that takes that all away.  They don't want to inform our members when they are monitored AND they want to be able to discipline them for anything they hear.  There is no way we will give up our hard-won language so the Company can abuse our members.

Their next group of proposals also looked to take away things we fought for over many years of bargaining.  While they made them today in proposals on Articles 35 and 36, they made it clear we will see them again when they pass other Articles:

 o  Eliminate double time after eight hours!  No double time until you work 12 hours in a day.

 o  Night differential ONLY for the hours worked outside the day-tour hours (instead of for the whole tour).

 o  Eliminate Sunday Premium pay!

 o  Make on-call (carrying a beeper) REQUIRED instead of "requested" AND with NO COMPENSATION so they can force you to carry a beeper and be available and you will get nothing for it.

Finally, they presented a proposal to allow the Company to "unilaterally" create, amend or discontinue its own "incentive" plans with no limits and no bargaining with the Union.  Every time they have raised this in the past, we have told them to put that money in the base, where it cannot be arbitrarily given to favorites or to set worker competing against worker.  Now, more than ever, it is important for every extra dollar to go either to the base or to help pay for health care costs.  Why would we give them the right to throw around millions that we have no right to bargain over?

Remember, when you are filling out your strike vote and mobilizing in your Locals, that this is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Company is trying to take away from you.