The Union Difference in Telecom Builds on Past Fights Over Workplace Technology

Telecommunications workers have always been at the center of the fight for good jobs in the face of new technologies in the workplace. Where our union once represented telephone operators, we have responded to technology-driven job destruction by organizing the next generation of workers for internet and wireless communications. Today, CWA members are again on the forefront of a technological revolution, having used AI tools on the job long before the general public first heard of ChatGPT.

CWA members know the union difference when technology disrupts the workplace. While workforce statistics have pointed toward a clear reduction in jobs since 2022, AT&T employees without union representation—including non-bargaining unit software positions, HR positions, and management positions—were three times more likely to experience job losses when compared to union-represented positions at AT&T. CWA members on the frontlines at AT&T have seen new AI tools used to automate tasks traditionally performed by managers, like surveilling workplace behaviors and automating employee feedback. Across the economy, those roles have often been the first to be eliminated when companies invest in workplace AI.

As billionaires and CEOs seek to use AI tools to cut costs, worker power and union contracts serve as the best ways to fight against future AI-related job losses.

To better inform bargaining priorities, CWA’s National Committee on Artificial Intelligence has led member discussions to understand how new AI technologies at AT&T and across telecommunications employers are changing the workplace. With a voice on the job, CWA members are lending their expertise and experience to shape how AI tools are implemented.

We are the experts in effective and safe technology usage in the workplace, not corporate executives.

Over 25 years ago, CWA members went on an 18-day strike at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) to demand workplace protections against abuse of new technologies during the early 2000s that similarly increased workplace stress and job insecurity—eventually securing protections against electronic surveillance in the workplace, gaining time off the phones, and defining what it meant to work on the internet.

As a continuation of this history, we are called once again to organize against the technologies of today, not only to protect the workplace but also the customers and communities that we serve nationwide.