AT&T Southeast Bargaining Report #39

Many CWA members who work at AT&T were already frustrated with the company before our contract negotiations even began.  Many of us have been continuously forced to work overtime day in and day out, pushed to the max in order to obtain some random performance metric that's been put in place by someone who has no idea how to actually perform our job, and disrespected on a daily basis by overbearing management.  AT&T will send us an email saying "Your Family Matters", and on the same day our supervisor will tell us we can't go home to our families at the end of our shifts; instead, we have to keep picking up jobs until there are none left, and only then can we ask them for permission to go home to our families.  This is the environment that AT&T has created.

The company has come to the bargaining table and created the same environment that exists in their workplace.  We are now one week past the expiration of our contract and the company has not offered one single contract improvement for any of our members who work in call center environments, not one single contract improvement for Wire Techs or Utility Operations.  There is a growing frustration amongst our membership.  Our members want a contract, and our bargaining team will continue to fight for the contract you deserve.  Now we are also fighting on another front.  Because of the company's bad faith bargaining tactics, we have been forced to file an unfair labor practice charge against the company.  We've told the company we would rather spend time and resources bargaining than litigating, but we feel we have no choice but to fight on that battleground as well.  It is not a battle of our choosing, but we know we can count on our members to support us in that battle just as they have supported us at the table.