AT&T "Legacy T" Special Bargaining Report #51

Some of you might be wondering why we are still bargaining while District 4 and the AT&T Midwest already have an agreement.

Some of you might look at that agreement and think we ought to take it.

It is not the job if this bargaining team to second-guess the decisions that were made in District 4. What we can say is that our issues are different. One of their key issues was to raise the pay of the “premise technicians” and they accomplished that. Our issue has been job security from day one. Our members are all over the nation. Aside from normal job loss, contracting out, automation, and moving work to management we now face a new threat – we are the only nationwide unit and the company can (and has) all too easily move our work to employees under the other Contracts. Our techs have felt this already and as other areas (and IBEW) have accepted a new commission-based (60% base/40% commission) sales title, this makes our call centers especially vulnerable. Between the 2005 bargaining and today we have lost 21% of our jobs. This will only get worse if we don’t get some serious job protection in our agreement.

While the company has backed off on many of their worst proposals, not only haven’t they agreed to any of our job security issues, but in some cases, we are further behind than we were in the 2005 Contract. They have refused to leave in some of the good language that we had. The Company can throw wage increases at us today, but what does it mean if we are laid off? They can re-coup every dime they promise by continuing to shrink the workforce.

Our plan is to keep fighting every day at the bargaining table to get us all what we need in this bargaining. The most important thing for you to do now is to continue to mobilize. You must let the company know that you will not be tricked by their attempt to pitch any single Contract as the one that is good for everyone, everywhere. Support us in doing the job you elected us to do.