Where Are Those Wage Increases from the GOP Corporate Tax Cut?

In order to get the Republican corporate tax cut bill passed, many big businesses made big promises to workers that their wages would go up. Instead, more than a year after the tax cut went into effect, those wage increases are nowhere to be found.

A piece published last week by NBC News and the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity shines a spotlight on how companies have failed to raise wages for their employees, and have instead funneled their massive profits from the tax bill into stock buybacks that only benefit executives and large shareholders. The piece features IUE-CWA member Lerouise Rupert at Emerson Electric and CWA member Marvin Thompson at AT&T Midwest.

The piece notes that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced that employees would receive $1,000 bonuses – about 1 percent of the estimated $20.4 billion tax windfall the company recorded in the fourth quarter of 2017, but that "while handing out the bonuses, AT&T was in the middle of laying off thousands of workers." 

"Employees who have been there and built the company are being pushed out in the chase of the almighty dollar," said Marvin Thompson, who has worked for AT&T for 18 years in its Dayton, Ohio, center.