Telecom News: Staking a Claim to AT&T Jobs in the High-Tech World

What started with AT&T in the era of the hand-crank telephone more than a 100 years ago is turning into a digital, worldwide telecommunications system that's revolutionized the way we call each other and gather information.

For CWA, "Our job is to understand it, to make sure we know where the industry is going and fight as hard as we can to make sure the jobs of the future are union jobs and that our members have access to them," said District 4 Vice President Seth Rosen.

CWA has already taken a step in that direction. Recently the union, through negotiations with AT&T, won back Internet/DSL customer support work that had been outsourced overseas and also contracted within the United States. The work represents about 2,000 potential jobs, with 800 of them returning to CWA representation in early 2007. More will be restored later in the year.

"Reversing the flow of work from contractors back to our bargaining units is a terrific achievement," CWA Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach said. "The wages and benefits we've negotiated, in addition to being superior to those in the industry, will provide a base for CWA to build career opportunities for even more workers."

Meanwhile, AT&T technicians are in demand, often working overtime hours, to build the company's fiber-optic network and install the system in homes across the country. Dubbed "U-verse," it will provide phone, data and cable TV service in a similar fashion to Verizon's FiOS system.

Rosen said the job future for CWA members will involve video tech jobs related to the cable TV part of the fiber system, customer technical support, like the jobs recently restored to CWA jurisdiction, and installation of digital hubs and routers.

AT&T expects to have several "super hubs," which will pick up signals and transmit them to smaller hubs. Routers, the digital version of switches installed by CWA members in the analog world, route signals to specific phones, computers or TVs in a home or office.

Today, AT&T is filling many of the jobs in new technology with contractors or so-called "managers," claiming that some work is too high-tech or secure for CWA-represented workers. But CWA leaders and members dispute that.

"This isn't about technological change," said Local 1150 President Laura Unger of New York City. It's a matter of training to allow members to follow their work as telecom systems evolve, she and others say. Much of the work currently being contracted or performed by managers "is work we used to do in one form or another, or work we could do."

"There's no doubt in my mind, both from the experience we have and the training we've had in the past, that we could do the work that's being contracted out now," said Randall Haines (pictured on left), an AT&T systems tech and member of CWA Local 6132 in Austin, Texas. That's led Haines to file a grievance, concerned not just about his job but job security for technicians with far less seniority than his 28 years with the company.

CWA is talking to AT&T about jobs and training needs, said Rechenbach, and is pointing out that, "Even though job functions are changing, we don't consider this to be 'new work,' but rather an extension of the work that our members have always done. Changing technology has always been a fact of life in telecom and for CWA."

The current AT&T contract with CWA expires in 2009, but Rechenbach said he's hopeful that many of the job and training issues will be worked out before then.

"We're encouraged by the fact that AT&T has agreed to move back work that's been contracted out to call centers in the United States and overseas," he said. "We hope to see that same kind of positive movement with work that's been created by new technology."