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More Than 20,000 AT&T Workers Are Getting Ready To Protest Nationwide (fortune.com)
Aaron Pressman, reporting for Fortune: Some 21,000 workers in AT&T's wireless business have overwhelming voted to authorize a strike just ahead of the expiration of their contract on Saturday. The vote, which was expected, comes after 17,000 additional workers in AT&T's phone, internet, and cable services in Nevada and California also approved a strike authorization last month. They have been working without a contract since April. But despite the strike authorization votes -- a common tactic to increase pressure on management during labor negotiations -- AT&T said it was still seeking to find common ground with its workers. Unlike some of its peers, AT&T has had a long run of labor peace with its workers and their main union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
I work in a union shop (in IT no less) - you can still be fired for being irresponsible - they just need documentation of this. I've seen people fired before for things like downsizing, showing up late constantly, showing up drunk, poor performance. At-will - your terrible boss (or your boss's boss) can fire you for whatever reason they want to - even a bad reason.
To turn this around btw - what is wrong with employees working with management on an employment contract? Its sad that it has to be codified in law to come together like that.
On one hand - that's illegal, but on the other hand - the government rarely enforces labor laws.
I do suspect hiring 20,000+ employees would cost more than simply agreeing on a contract.
It's more that they want more money diverted to their own pockets. The same as the rest of us, really.
The main thrust of prices is you're paying the wages of workers providing goods and services. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are big outliers with their 25% profit margins, and Tesla's luxury niche lets them get 22% in a market where Ford and GM make in the 12% range; people like to look at these and at single-quarter or single-year profits of healthcare companies (some as high as 49% net profit margins) and claim businesses are taking all the money. On average, American businesses are getting less than 10% of all spending as profit; the rest of the total income is wages. Even some of the big healthcare companies swinging 49% in some years are pulling 30% and higher net losses in others, averaging 11%-14% (which is still high).
You get a narrative where people want higher wages and claim businesses should just take less profit. or CEOs should make less; in reality, that doesn't happen. Profits aren't that high to begin with--e.g. Comcast's $86/month Internet service comes from a business with an 11% net profit margin, so they could drop the price to $77.60 and make $0 profit (assuming they drop the price of every product they offer evenly), and likewise would raise that price basis as they raise wages. CEO salaries are pretty low on a per-worker term, so much so that the top executives of Ford combined could forego all their salary and bonuses and get enough money to buy a latte for every Ford employee once each month.
What we're really talking about is raising wages and raising the price of products. GM could pay workers more and raise the price of cars. AT&T could pay workers more and raise the price of phone service. Then, we would either have less money to spend on other things and thus support fewer American jobs or we'd all move to T-Mobile where they didn't raise worker wages so we could pay less for service and complain about AT&T suddenly laying off 15,000 employees when 80% of their customer base moved to other providers.
Everyone really wants to imagine money comes from nowhere and businesses have infinite profits. The world isn't a video game where we suppose there are consumers and they have money; it's a complex system where money moves back and forth.
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I'm in oil patch country, as were my ancestors.
It's clear you're not from around here.
There was a time when unions ruled the day, as reported in this anecdotal, bias-confirming evidence provided by log-time /. member, CaptainDork ( 3678879 ):
I was working at Texaco ca. mid '80s when I saw my brother-in-law (BIL) walking out the plant, leading a crowd that was expanding quite rapidly as he approached.
I asked him WTF and he said a supervisor asked him to climb up the side of a tower on a rusted ladder.
BIL asked for a safety inspector to OK the ladder.
The super refused, and BIL pointed to the ladder and said, "Well, you go first."
The super said, "Go up or give me your badge."
BIL threw his badge at the super.
Other union workers began pelting the super with their badges.
Union steward shows up, listens to both sides and calls a wildcat.
In 15 minutes, after tossing my badge on the ground, I'm home drinking a beer watching it all on TV.
--
Those days are long over. The unions are busted now.
They are trying to make a comeback, as in pendulum swing.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I can't stand AT&T or unions, so this is nothing but entertaining to me.
Actually, strike that; I hope both lose.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It's an intrinsic part of the American Dream.
In the American Dream, you are the up and coming baron of some, now unknown, but soon to be discovered, market. Knowing that you will become this overlord of industry, why would you vote to put up such a strong road block as unions? Wouldn't you rather vote to ensure that they don't impede your eventual rise to wealth?
I ran a non-union shop. You need to document your reasons for firing regardless. If the ex-employee sues you for wrongful termination, you need to be able to prove your reasons for firing the person were legit. For minor offenses (things that don't warrant immediate firing), you need to show that you warned the employee multiple times. That's why the boss makes you sign that paper saying you were warned to stop showing up late - it's their documented proof that they warned you.
So whether or not the shop is union is irrelevant - any employer wanting to stay in business will document reasons for dismissal. Just like employees worry about dishonest bosses firing them in at-will states for some made-up reason, employers worry about dishonest employees suing them for made-up wrongful dismissal charges in all states.
It's more that they want more money diverted to their own pockets.
According to TFA, the workers are also upset about outsourcing. I am not sure that striking is a good way to convince AT&T that they should outsource less, and depend more on reliable American labor.
On one hand - that's illegal, but on the other hand - the government rarely enforces labor laws.
They will enforce them even less once Obama's NLRB members are termed out and replaced with Trump appointees. More Republicans in the federal courts will also lead to weaker unions.
Kind of the same problem. It's all economizing: if you lose your job, you lose income and now you have to find work (effort). At the same time, instability is bad, and the threat to your own ability to hold a job is visceral and scary.
The thing is outsourcing (trade) and technical progress both immediately eliminate jobs at a point. You find a faster way to shear sheep, you only need 9 of every 10 sheep shearers; that last guy can go find somewhere new to work. Maybe that doesn't happen, and the drop in the price of wool causes 10% more wool purchases; or maybe something in-between happens, and only 1 in 20 workers goes away; or maybe the opposite happens, and wool becomes affordable enough that its superiority to cotton causes it to displace cotton, and now you hire 8 times the sheep shearers but the cotton industry has round after round of layoffs as nobody's buying anymore.
Trade and technical progress also reduce the actual cost of products, and leads to a reduction in price. That means your ability to buy your own clothes instead of making them or waiting for rich people to throw them out for scavenging when the new styles come in is contingent on generations of your forefathers losing their jobs repeatedly to less-labor-intensive processes. At a point, those processes turned the market around and made clothing a widely-purchased commodity, although that came when people could afford it by way of us not having to employ a lot of people per clothing article made--which, when you go from a 10%-population market to a 98%-population market, is still a lot of movement. Even then, the actual ability to purchase clothing means the same money wasn't spent on something else--either because that something else got cheaper or because people liked clothes better and stopped buying it.
From that market turn-around, you then only have the reduction of clothing-maker jobs. New tech to make clothes cheaper, but we don't buy more clothing (we buy video games instead); outsourcing to import clothing cheaply, and the manufacture jobs vanish (but we can buy other things). The shipping and retail worker jobs grew with each of these--more stuff bought, more shipped, more sold--although we economize that, too (wooden shipping pallets...).
I'm part of this system, too. My job can go away. I work with computers and do system administration and network security; I always look for ways to minimize the costs. Less labor, fewer analysts, easier administration. I moved this company from Linux with programs to Linux configured by Puppet, and now to Linux with Docker, and now performing my job takes literally 1/100 as long (I've replaced repeating processes that took 6 days with processes that take 5 minutes, seriously). I always argue for systems that do most of their analysis and tuning for us so we don't need to hire 15 analysts for 24-hour coverage--this is literally the difference between Snort with BASE and something like CISCO FirePower: one person can do IDS analysis with FirePower here, and it would literally take at least 15 analysts at $40k/year each (plus more administrative overhead) to stitch together a cheap, home-grown system. I'm not exempt.
I've torn out systems in the past and re-architected them with half as many components because the parts I wanted to remove were breaking. Near 100% of support calls for those systems went away, and several impacted departments down the line became more-productive. I'm removing over 90% of the systems I've ever supported because I've built new stuff that replaces it all. I've argued for new business processes, and am trying to develop a documentation process and procedure here--and document the processes used to deploy new systems, deploy new software, and maintain all this crap. It's all trivial, and it's getting more-trivial day by day.
Eventually they just won't need me. They might promote me to another position just to keep me. People have tried; I've had people try to hire me simply to have me on-hand for
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The only thing more frightening than the thought that Slashdot editors don't read summaries before they publish them is the thought that they do....
All these companies want is cheap labor. Hence that hey support illegals taking America jobs
AT&T is making billions, thanks in part to the Union workers. They don't need concessions, they need to share the wealth.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
If corporations don't like employees in a given state or country, can't they just go elsewhere?
Doesn't it work the same with the shoe on the other foot?
Londo Mollari: my shoes are too tight.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If they're calling for a strike, then it isn't something trivial.
Everyone is quick to judge them, yet have zero information about what the contract is offering or what the issues are.
I WORK for AT&T and this article on Slashdot is the first news I have heard on the matter. ( I fall under wireline vs wireless, though our contract is also up this year )
For those who have not worked for a Union company, let me brief you on a few things.
You cannot negotiate any part of your job with the company. Salary, benefits, time off, nothing. All of it is done from the Union.
Our last contract, the healthcare premium increase effectively erased the mediocre raise we got. ( ~1 - 1.5% a year )
The company no longer trains non-management employees ( I haven't seen any training for more than a decade ) for the equipment they're responsible for.
The newer folks are supposed to learn from the veteran techs. ( Who carry the job most of the time )
So you're effectively on your own to learn it. I am one of three people with a Cisco Cert ( my vacation time, my money to obtain it ) on my team and have full blown enable access to damn near every router and switch in the company. All the way up to the Core level systems.
Think about that for a moment. The vast majority of my team has the same level of access and exactly ZERO formal training on any of it and the company could give two shits about it.
Training, healthcare costs and a raise that isn't laughable are usually the big issues that Strikes are born from. It's not that the company can't afford it, they just take their workforce for granted and think all this stuff just magically works on its own somehow. :|
Oh and for those who think you can replace everyone with just anyone off the street at a lower wage, it typically takes at least two years ( a year for the ultra-motivated ) for an already qualified someone to become proficient enough at their work to do so without help. Unless, of course, you think these folks are just born with innate knowledge of how specialized telecom hardware works and integrates with the other systems.
If that were the case, the company would have replaced everyone a long time ago.
So don't judge those considering a strike too harshly just yet. At least until we know what their reasons are.
No shit. It's a good thing I don't know a single story of a woman or minority ever being discriminated against, ever. And terribly sad that our court system is so stacked the other way- always finding in favor of the legally-inexperienced, often lawyerless, relatively poor minority or female former employee instead of the lawyer-on-retainer, deep-pocketed, been-there-before employer.
Just because most corporate employment lawyers are cowards and most MBA HR-types have incredible legal naivete doesn't mean you should be so racist and misogynist.
Actually, it's not. It would, however, be "legally actionable". (firing striking union employees is a big no-no.)
Wrongful termination is nearly impossible to prove in an at-will state. You can be fired for "any reason, including NO REASON". What does get employers in trouble is running the mouth about why they fired someone. (this is why no company will say why an employee is no longer there.)
These workers will be canned, blacklisted, and replaced by younger people willing to work for vastly less - all in under a week. The official message from our dear government after that (disseminated by the "terrible media" that the same government claims to hate so much) will be that it is all the fault of the workers and their union.
These are the people that work on the POTS network.
Perhaps if AT&T had thought ahead and moved to fiber end-to-end years ago, this wouldn't be an issue.
However, they still have tons of copper in the ground, and you're not going to find someone at a job fair that knows how to deal with that.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Well, it shouldn't be...?
It said they were without contract. If there's no contract, meaning old contracts are up....they what is illegal about firing them?
What legally can they do if there is no existing contract in force?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Although this is true for at-will states, if you get fired you can still sue for wrongful termination. It will still be up to the company to prove that you were NOT fired for actionable events (such as being female, or gay, or asian, etc). Most smart companies (HR specifically) will fire you with NO REASON thus if you sue, they just have to prove you were not fired because you were female or black or whatever. If they fire you for A REASON then when you sue they ALSO have to prove that reason. So if you're fired because you show up late, and they state that in documentation, when you sue, they have to PROVE you were late and notified of being late, etc. with documentation of the infractions. In a lot of companies, if you are fired, there is NO REASON given. You might be told you're fired because you're late, but the documentation does not list a reason, thus helping the company in the event of a lawsuit.
Yes, but if you fire someone for any reason other than it being their fault, you are on the hook to cover their unemployment.
I had a girlfriend once that worked for ATT for years. From my knowledge through her, they aren't underpaid on any level at ATT.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The article said the old contract is about to expire.
If it expires, it cannot be in force.
if that were the case, it would me that potentially anyone that ever enters into a contract, could never legally get out of one and there would never be any such thing as an expiration date on a contract.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Welcome to the world of unions.
Fuck'em.
I'm sure there are plenty of other, non-union people out there that would really like a decent job.
If no contract in place, nothing from stopping ATT from hiring new folks that aren't union.
Unions are the reason you have a reasonable salary and medical benefits. Probably too, the unions stopped
many of the H1B recruits from coming over. Union agreements require bidding for jobs and internal hiring.
There is still a good role for unions, unless you are a billionaire.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Unions *DID* provide a much needed service when they came into being.
However, once past that, they just became bloated, political, self serving money sucking entities that care more about self sustainment than the workers.
They are more a hindrance than a help in this modern age.
And over the past couple decades, I've worked more contracting, so, I am perfectly capable of negotiating my bill rates, and paying my own medical, benefits, etc.
Any reasonably intelligent person should be able to do the same....and if doing W2, they should be able to negotiate their salary in the same way. If they're good, they'll get good pay and benefits.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........