August 30, 2018
Fighting Today…Focused on the Future!
The Union committee returned home from Chicago yesterday.
The Company’s latest offer continues to fall short of what CWA members have demanded that this bargaining committee fight for – although they did a nice job of trying to mask it in their email to employees yesterday morning.
The issues this committee was sent to address by our membership at the table still have not been recognized and adequately answered by AT&T. They are well aware of the Union’s position on offshoring and outsourcing of work that we can perform on behalf of AT&T and our customers. The company must return work to the CWA members that built this company. They should do the right thing for all of their employees and customers; bring back this work to the high quality, loyal employees that are here today.
We are not going to address all of the smoke and mirrors that the company communicated in their update in this report. We will point out a couple of misstatements that are glaring.
CWA, in the latest Verizon agreement, extended a contract, with some benefit and wage adjustments that were reached in 2016. That agreement returned call center and technician work that had previously been outsourced, to CWA members covered by that contract. This is hardly similar to what AT&T is offering in their latest proposal.
In regard to the other contracts reached with AT&T companies, the benefit changes and job security provisions that the company is proposing to change in the latest offer are not in line with what was agreed to in all the other agreements reached with AT&T wireline operating companies.
We too believe it would be in everyone’s best interest to reach and ratify a tentative agreement. But it doesn’t appear that AT&T is willing to work towards an agreement that will increase employment in our centers and field locations, as Verizon did in 2016. CWA’s membership and this committee want an agreement. We hoped we would have one on April 14th. It is our sincere hope that AT&T reverses the course that they are on of decimating middle class union jobs and return to their roots of quality, United States based employees, to service our customers and support our communities.
The committee remains available to meet with the company when they are prepared to offer an agreement that has a future for you. In the meantime, the political and public pressure highlighting the bad decisions that AT&T is making with their downhill spiral of outsourcing, offshoring, and layoffs, will continue along with the ongoing member mobilization that has been occurring across the Midwest.
Mobilize!
In Solidarity,
Your CWA District 4 Bargaining Team
Curt Hess, Tina Culver, Dan Frazier, Kim Gallardo, Tim Strong, Greg Tennyson, Jay Walther, Ron Gay, Mike Handley
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