79 Elected Officials Back AT&T Workers in California, Nevada

but union leaders have yet to declare one (see 1612160065). “If they did go on strike, then I would support the strike,” Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor (D) said Tuesday on a Communications Workers of America teleconference. Arvin Mayor Jose Gurrola said, “I would support them because they’re standing up for good-paying jobs and good benefits and providing reliable, quality service throughout the state.” Gillmor said Santa Clara residents complain about AT&T landline phone and internet services, and Gurrola said Arvin residents don’t have reliable mobile or high-speed services. “You would imagine that we wouldn't have any issues in our location" in Silicon Valley, Gillmor said. “But we still experience and I receive many complaints from our residents about the lack of quality and in some cases availability of service.” The mayors joined 77 other California and Nevada elected officials writing a letter to CEO Randall Stephenson about reliability problems and job cuts as the company negotiates with workers in the two states. Mayors, city council members and state legislators signed the letter. A spokesman responded that the telco employs more full-time, union employees than any other company in the U.S., hiring 2,700 union employees in California last year. That's across the business and a combination of new jobs and backfill for attrition, a spokesperson told us. It invested about $7.25 billion in California wireless and wireline networks over the past three years, he said. “Our objective is to reach a fair contract that will allow us to continue to provide solid union-represented careers with excellent wages and benefits, just as we have with 28 of our other bargaining units across the country, including [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] IBEW-represented landline employees in California who ratified a very similar agreement to the one we’re proposing with the CWA.”