- AT&T union workers in nine states have been on strike since August, when CWA filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company
- With a hurricane moving into the southeast U.S., AT&T is hiring contractors there to make up for its labor shortage
- Analyst Roger Entner thinks AT&T and CWA “will find an agreement sooner than later”
Hurricane Francine just made landfall and is zeroing in on the area where 17,000 AT&T Southeast U.S. employees have been on strike for nearly a month. More could be joining the picket lines soon enough.
Communications Workers of America (CWA) in August filed an unfair labor practice charge against AT&T for “not bargaining in good faith, engaging in surface bargaining, and not sending representatives to the bargaining table with the authority to make decisions.”
The ongoing strike involves AT&T technicians, customer service reps and others who install and maintain the company’s business and residential wireline networks across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
The eye of the storm
With the hurricane expected to bring increased service outages and interruptions, AT&T is hiring contractors to provide storm recovery services. The initial rate for a two-person aerial crew is $210 per hour, according to a post from the American Fiber Optic Infrastructure Projects Facebook group.
Additional strikes could follow in California and Nevada, as CWA on Wednesday authorized a separate strike against AT&T West. This comes after AT&T workers in those states rejected a tentative agreement for a new contract.
“This may be the wake-up call AT&T needed to get these negotiations done,” said CWA District 3 President Richard Honeycutt in a statement. “Our members want to be back at work serving our customers.”
Once a strike has been authorized by CWA’s executive board, it can begin at any time, a CWA spokesperson told Fierce. Right now, AT&T is “very short staffed” for technicians to make repairs and service the network during the hurricane.
“What they have actually been doing is bringing in managers from AT&T West to help fill in some of that work, as well as hiring additional contractors,” the rep said.
If California and Nevada workers move forward to strike, a total of around 25,000 AT&T employees would be on the picket line, placing “monumental pressure” on AT&T to maintain service.
“We’ve made ourselves available to be at the table to meet with AT&T 24/7, seven days a week,” the CWA rep stated. “So we are definitely eager to see AT&T negotiate in good faith.”
Fierce reached out to AT&T for comment. The spokesperson referred to a media statement as of September 9:
“On Sept. 8, we reopened discussions on the terms of the final offer we submitted to the CWA on Sept. 4 as we continue the constructive negotiations we’ve engaged in since day one. We continue to aim for an agreement that will provide competitive market-based pay that exceeds projected inflation, provides benefits that improve employees’ total well-being, and sustains a competitive position in the broadband industry where we can grow and win against our mostly non-union competitors. We are hopeful that the CWA will engage with us in the same spirit and work towards an agreement to get our employees back to work.”
Finding an agreement
Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner commented he thinks AT&T and CWA “will find an agreement sooner than later,” as unionized labor brings “rigorous negotiations that include strikes.”
“These things never last long enough for long-term consequences,” said Entner.
The AT&T strikes come as the broadband industry frequently cites a labor shortage. But it’s more so “a shortage of good jobs,” CWA’s Ceilidh Gao told us in July. She noted broadband jobs are “less safe than they used to be,” while wages have declined in recent decades.
In other broadband labor union developments, West Virginia CWA members voted in June to authorize a strike against Altice USA, but reached a tentative agreement with the operator in July that included a 7.7% compounded wage increase.
