ATLANTA, Ga. and SACRAMENTO, Calif–Members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) reached tentative agreements with AT&T. These agreements cover both AT&T Southeast, where 17,000 members were on strike for 30 days, and AT&T West where negotiations with the company were strained.
Activity on the picket line placed enormous pressure on AT&T to reach agreements with CWA, as workers demonstrated at every AT&T location in the southeastern United States and brought telecommunications work to a standstill. CWA members reported to work for their shifts on Monday morning, September 16.
Up in the mountains of North Carolina, just outside the town of Canton, 20 minutes west of Asheville, AT&T workers have been on strike since August 16. Some 17,000 Southeast union workers joined them to push to pull the international telecommunications company back to the bargaining table.
Although negotiations with management started way back on June 25, initial talks were unproductive in the eyes of workers. Frustration with management was at the heart of the strike.
Negotiations had stalled for weeks, and when AT&T met with the union its representatives were often not empowered to make decisions on behalf of the company. The union ended meetings with a federally appointed mediator after it appeared that AT&T used the mediator as a stalling tactic and workers suspected the mediator may have conducted separate conversations with management. Failure to bargain in good faith is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.
Set up outside just off the highway, workers and local community members made their demands heard. “We went on strike ‘cause the company wasn’t bargaining in good faith,” an anonymous striker explained. “It’s a ULP strike. It’s an unfair labor practice strike.”
Workers sought a fair deal from AT&T, a company which reported revenues of nearly $30 billion between April and June of this year, fueled in part by a 7% increase in consumer broadband. It is the workers with CWA who install and maintain those lines.
Technicians, customer service representatives, and line installation and maintenance crews were among the 17,000 striking workers across the Southeast. The workers pushed for improvements on issues common to workers everywhere: Scheduling, wages, and healthcare.
CWA reported the new agreement with AT&T Southeast includes a 19.33% increase in wages for all workers plus an additional 3% for wire technicians, and stabilization of healthcare costs for the next four years.
Workers on the picket lines felt as though they’d more than earned their right to a fair deal from AT&T. During the coronavirus pandemic, CWA workers continued the essential work of maintaining millions of miles of fiber optic cable and other telecommunications systems that connected the world.
“We were considered essential workers. We would go into houses to do an install or fix the connection and the people living there had Covid”–the official name for the virus–recalled CWA Local 3902 President Ed Brazier. Based in Homewood, Ala., Brazier is a digital technician servicing cell towers and high speed data transmission systems. “We service all the equipment in the region, not just AT&T. T-Mobile, Verizon, Boost, all of it. If it’s there we’re the ones who maintain it.”
Although AT&T field technicians are scheduled to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., “wire techs don’t go home until AT&T says they’re done,” Braser told People’s World. Even under normal conditions, AT&T wire technicians are only permitted one weekend off per month. When major outages happen, as is frequently the case when hurricanes, storms, or heat waves hit the region, both field techs and office staff are required to work around the clock to restore service.
Real value shines through
It’s during these storms that the real value of the work becomes apparent to everyone. In an effort to restore service, AT&T will typically bring in temporary telecommunications workers. During this strike, they did so, and paid wages of $200/hour or more to attract workers from across the United States.
These temporary workers work alongside local AT&T staff who do the same work fixing telecom lines around the clock under the most challenging conditions for a fraction of the wage. “And then after they leave we have to go back and fix everything again because they don’t know what they’re doing,” Brazier said of the itinerant telecom workers.
Conditions for office staff aren’t easy either. Erroll Minor, a member of CWA Local 3902, oversees critical infrastructure for hospitals and other institutions where a loss of service could be catastrophic.
When problems occur, it’s all hands on deck for however long it takes to restore service. “We see how badly they treat the techs who are out there crawling under porches, out in the rain, sleet, and snow. And they let us know that they consider office staff a tier below that even. They’re trying to divide us up,” Minor told People’s World. Customer service representatives, office clerks, and administrators sought the kinds of flexibility office workers in other sectors enjoy, like options to work from home.
Since the start of the strike, management had to take on direct responsibility for service outages. As managers experienced the demands of the job firsthand out in the field and in the office, the pressure to re-engage with the union intensified as customers became more impatient with prolonged outages and poor service. “There are no installs happening right now, and big delays on maintenance. Some places have been out of service for four weeks since the strike began,” Minor reported.
Southern workers were not alone in their struggle. AT&T West had its own contract negotiations and workers there also reached a settlement. That four-year tentative agreement covers 8,500 workers in California and Nevada. The workers had rejected the firm’s prior offer. “The majority determined it did not meet our needs,” CWA District 9 Vice President Frank Arce said then.
This proposed contract has a 15.01 percent increase over its life.
“This new agreement builds on what we achieved in the first round of bargaining,” Arce’s follow-up statement said. “In addition to maintaining gains on employment security, overtime, and scheduling, we improved the compensation package. This was possible due to the dedication of our outstanding bargaining team to quickly address the concerns our members raised and the mobilization of our members throughout the process.”
The CWA strike in the Southeast is the latest large-scale strike among a growing wave of labor activity. According to the NLRB, there have been 14,746 unfair labor practices charges in 2024 so far. The labor movement has surged in popularity in recent years despite union membership being only 10% of all workers. But with 20 percent or more of voters in swing states belonging to a union or a union family, the labor movement will be pivotal in the 2024 presidential election.
The contradictions were clear to Minor, “We were all ‘Essential Employees’ during the pandemic when they needed us to keep working no matter what. But now we’re ‘at will’ employees they can let go at any time. And when it comes to bargaining the response from AT&T is just… ‘whatever.’”
Minor, Brazier and 17,000 other CWA members at every AT&T location across the southeast United States saw the strike through. Said Minor: “All of us have been out on the picket line. We’re holding our strike lines until AT&T comes back to the table.” It appears their efforts paid off in the new tentative agreement announced on September 15.
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