West Coast Work Stoppage Possible as CWA Seeks Pact With AT&T
West Coast union workers hope to avoid a strike against AT&T when they return to the bargaining table at the start of the new year, a Communications Workers of America official told us Monday. But one union worker from San Diego said he believes a work stoppage is inevitable and could provide similar gains to those won by East-Coast CWA members in their six-week strike earlier this year against Verizon (see 1606170051). Workers last week held protests on overpasses in San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area. The union hasn’t set a date for a work stoppage (see 1612160065).
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“We are hoping we can come to an agreement without having to go on strike as our brothers and sisters did on the East Coast with Verizon,” CWA District 9 South Area Director Ellen West said in an interview. “We’re more than willing to stay at the bargaining table and continue to meet.” The national president of CWA will decide whether to strike, “and bargaining would have to break down to nothing before we would do that," West said. "We’re very optimistic that we can fight it out at the table.” The union’s 15,000 workers authorized a strike in April when their contract expired; bargaining for the new contract began in February, she said.
“What precipitated the overpass rallies was that in the last three to four weeks, AT&T has been dragging their feet in bargaining,” West said. “It was really to motivate the company to get to the bargaining table. … We’ve been bargaining for 10 months and we’re no closer to getting a contract than we were back in February.” The workers oppose AT&T shifting more healthcare costs to workers and the company giving less benefits to new hires compared to existing full-time workers, West said. The workers also oppose a recent AT&T practice of shifting the duties of the higher-paid systems technician to the lower-paid premises technician without appropriate compensation, she said. They oppose changing the pay structure for call center employees to 60 percent wages, 40 percent commission from 100 percent wages. The issues are similar to those in CWA’s strike against Verizon on the East Coast in that the AT&T proposals “do affect the consumer as well as the communities in which these workers live,” she said.
“I don’t see any way to avoid” a strike, said Armando Zepeda, an AT&T union worker and a mobilizer for CWA District 9 and Local 9509. He participated in the San Diego overpass rally and said there were about 40 people standing in the rain at the protest’s peak. “We need to go on strike to fix this like the Verizon workers did … because they had a win,” he said. Since the Verizon strike, more workers have joined the union, he said. “That was a big victory for us.” Zepeda said he’s “more than willing” to go on strike for as long a duration as the Verizon workers did.
Workers are concerned about job security, said Zepeda, a premises technician who personally received work meant for technicians paid $11 to $12 per hour more, but without a proportionate bump in pay. Zepeda, who works on installations for U-Verse and DirecTV, said he worries about losing his job if the higher-paid technicians want to move down to his pay scale to get back the work. Also, AT&T has sent many California call center jobs overseas, he said.
The carrier provides “excellent union careers with very competitive wages and benefits, and we provide more of them than anyone else in the country,” a spokesman said Monday. “We are committed to reaching fair agreements with our unions. We have successfully reached 19 separate labor agreements in just 2015 and 2016, collectively covering more than 100,000 employees.” The carrier hired nearly 3,200 employees in California through November this year, and is currently hiring 400 more throughout the state, the spokesman said. Union workers protested shipping jobs overseas, but the AT&T spokesman said the carrier is “a global company, which means we have global operations and customers around the world.”
CEO Randall Stephenson touted the carrier’s commitment to its union workforce earlier this month as he defended the company’s proposed $108.7 billion buy of Time Warner at a Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing (see 1612060065). The telco “has the largest full-time union workforce of any company in America, and the combined company will continue AT&T’s practice of working responsibly with the unions representing its members,” Stephenson said in written testimony.
“He was speaking gibberish to me,” Zepeda said about the Stephenson comments. “He doesn’t believe in the union worker because he made $27 million last year. I made $80,000. He hits the lotto every year while I’m wondering how I’m going to retire.” Historically, AT&T has been “a good employer for many workers,” said West. Others have told us the same (see report in the Aug. 15, 2013, issue of this publication). Now, union workers are facing one of the “roughest times in bargaining” they've ever experienced, West said. “We’re seeing a very greedy side of AT&T where corporate greed is really running the company.”