AT&T to Hire 350 at Goldsboro, NC Center

Below is a response to a recent newpaper article from Roy Hegenbart, President CWA Local 3250.

In Unity,
Ralph V. Maly, Jr.
Vice President

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AT&T to Hire 350 at Goldsboro, NC Center

Its good to see work being returned back to America, but it is still the same race to the bottom of the wage scale.  First AT&T laid off their call center reps in the US so they could move the work offshore to obtain the cheapest wages in the world. Now they are moving the work back to America for wages that are half of what AT&T originally paid the reps before they laid them off.

To add insult to injury, AT&T then obtains subsidies and tax breaks from state and local governments to build the new call center in North Carolina. How does a multi billion-dollar company get away with this? How can our legislators let Corporate America get away with this kind of legal and unethical theft, when it is occurring right under their noses?

There were thousands of call center reps laid off at wages that could support families; now those same jobs are returned at less than half of their original pay and half of the North Carolina statewide average wage. Our legislators should be taking notice and representing Working Americans and not behaving like they are in the pockets of the Telecoms? There is no limit to Corporate Greed. It’s become business as usual as the rich get richer, while we the workers pay the price of lost wages and benefits.

Please take the time to contact your legislator at http://www.house.gov/writerep/ or http://cwa-legislative.org/activist-tools/write.html to share your outrage and help restore fair and equitable treatment for all workers and their families.

In Unity There Is Strength.

Roy Hegenbart
President/Local 3250

AT&T to Hire 350 at Goldsboro Center

John Murawski, Staff Writer

AT&T plans to hire 350 people for a customer support center in Goldsboro, about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh.

The state's biggest phone company plans to spend $4.5 million to renovate a former Winn-Dixie grocery store in the city.

Last year, AT&T agreed to bring 3,000 outsourced jobs back to the U.S. so that federal regulators would approve its acquisition of BellSouth. Other conditions by the Federal Communications Commission included offering DSL Internet service to first-time customers for $10 a month.

AT&T has announced similar facilities in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky to provide over-the-phone technical assistance to high-speed Internet customers.

AT&T was awarded $600,000 in state and local incentives for choosing Goldsboro over other Southeastern locations.

The city of Goldsboro, Wayne County and the Wayne County Development Alliance each committed as much as $100,000 to help offset renovation costs. In addition, the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center has committed as much as $300,000 from its building renovation fund, which was created to help stimulate investment in rural areas of the state.

"This was a chance to have a name brand company bringing in a high number of jobs," said Joanna Thompson, president of the Wayne County Development Alliance. "They'll be hiring kids out of high school and with one or two years of community college who might do some shift work. That's their employment base."

The grants are based on creating new jobs, but terms have not been set for how long AT&T would have to maintain the jobs, Thompson said.

The $300,000 from the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center is contingent on creating 50 full-time jobs with health benefits and keeping the jobs for at least a year after building renovations are complete.

The wages at AT&T's center will start in the low $20,000 range, below the Wayne county average of $29,120 a year. The statewide average is $40,040.

Wayne County's unemployment rate was 4.6 percent in October, the same as the state's.

AT&T projects a total payroll of $8 million, averaging about $23,000 per employee, for the facility at the Neuse River Shopping Center, 2441 U.S. 117. AT&T will begin hiring within 30 days and is accepting applications at www.att.jobs.

"Granted, they may not be high-paying jobs, but there will be people who will compete for these jobs," said Patrick Woodie, a vice president at the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center.