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AT&T Preps For New Layoffs Despite Billions In Tax Breaks and Regulatory Favors (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: AT&T is preparing for yet another significant round of layoffs according to internal documents obtained by Motherboard. The staff reductions come despite billions in tax breaks and regulatory favors AT&T promised would dramatically boost both investment and job creation. A source at AT&T who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly told Motherboard that company leadership is planning what it's calling a "geographic rationalization" and employment "surplus" reduction that will consolidate some aspects of AT&T operations in 10 major operational hubs in New York, California, Texas, New Jersey, Washington State, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, and Washington, DC. A spokesperson for AT&T confirmed to Motherboard that it is planning to "adjust" its workforce.
While AT&T has yet to come up with a final, formal internal tally for this new round of looming layoffs, AT&T employees worry the staff reductions could prove to be significant, especially outside of these core areas. Managers are being briefed on the plans now, though AT&T isn't expected to formally announce the specifics until they're finalized later this month. The staff reductions were first announced in an internal memo sent to managers last Friday by Jeff McElfresh, President, Technology & Operations at AT&T. This news comes in the wake of AT&T receiving a $20 billion windfall last quarter courtesy of the Trump administration tax breaks. That's in addition to the friendlier environment AT&T finds itself in as a result of the Trump administration's assault on consumer protections ranging from net neutrality to broadband privacy guidelines. "To win in this new world, we must continue to lower costs and keep getting faster, leaner, and more agile," McElfresh told employees. "This includes reductions in our organization, and others across the company, which will begin later this month and take place over several months."
While AT&T has yet to come up with a final, formal internal tally for this new round of looming layoffs, AT&T employees worry the staff reductions could prove to be significant, especially outside of these core areas. Managers are being briefed on the plans now, though AT&T isn't expected to formally announce the specifics until they're finalized later this month. The staff reductions were first announced in an internal memo sent to managers last Friday by Jeff McElfresh, President, Technology & Operations at AT&T. This news comes in the wake of AT&T receiving a $20 billion windfall last quarter courtesy of the Trump administration tax breaks. That's in addition to the friendlier environment AT&T finds itself in as a result of the Trump administration's assault on consumer protections ranging from net neutrality to broadband privacy guidelines. "To win in this new world, we must continue to lower costs and keep getting faster, leaner, and more agile," McElfresh told employees. "This includes reductions in our organization, and others across the company, which will begin later this month and take place over several months."
' Leadership is planning what it's calling a "geographic rationalization" '- Along the lines of Trump's inauguration day crowd, for diminutive example.
I don't think we can take much more of this winning.
I wish they would specify if it is copper cable layers losing jobs if it is this was inevitable as it is cheaper and less labor intensive to lay fiber.
Regardless though it is kinda bullshit that ATT gets government subsidies of any kind.
When you take money from people against their will, you're going to allocate it badly.
Leave people alone.
"When you take money from people against their will" = IE hold the entire country hostage for a down payment on your 45-75 BILLION dollar paperweight over rugged terrain, as experts say is the epitome of wasted effort.
"Regulatory favors" don't make people subscribe to DirecTV. "Tax breaks" don't make people choose a mediocre mobile phone provider. They also don't create the need for redundant G&A staff after merging with Time Warner.
I don't like AT&T, but unneeded staff get laid off regardless of whatever grudge anyone has with a company. Consider being more of a grownup when you write these.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...agile bullshit....would love to bitchslap the next CEO asshat that says that word...
The poster fails to mention the $180B debt that at & t currently has and that as interest rates rise there's a substantial risk that the company could go bankrupt and need a bail out. They've already publicly committed to reducing their debt load by $20B in 2019. They'll probably need to do a lot more to survive the next big credit crunch.
They put the "down" in trickle-down.
Table-ized A.I.
Companies never plan their manpower needs based on tax breaks and incentives. Companies look at the work that needs to get done, the money they have, they billing they expect and from there decide how much manpower they need. These companies are not going to hire people to sit on their thumbs doing nothing. So if they have to much manpower, they layoff. Government tax breaks are not going to affect this process.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Ok.
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Now, hand over that address
Second time in a month that /. fails to think finances when it comes to corporate layoffs.
- AT&T and other large companies borrowed large sums at low interest rates over the last few years for stock buybacks.
- 2019 is a year with ~20 billion debt due for AT&T and little hope of refinancing it at rates anywhere near the current rate paid.
- AT&T is rated just above junk status and a balance sheet slip would put it into junk status and drastically raise the cost to finance dept.
- And many bond covenants have stipulations that the principle is paid faster if the company goes from investment grade rating to junk rating.
It's easy to look at via FINRA how the company debt vs maturity is trading versus risk free US Treasury issues of similar maturity and coupon rates. Trading at rates well above treasuries is a sign that the bond market thinks the company balance sheet is in poor standing.
A credit event like Long Term Capital Management, Lehman Brothers, etc would raise borrowing costs to 9% or higher per year and make it nearly impossible for AT&T to refinance its outstanding debt. Thus bankruptcy and likely like GM get bailed out by the US taxpayer with the nice for AT&T benefit of shifting its unfunded pension liabilities to the government run PBGC.
The credit event would sink stocks and nearly all bonds except for US Treasury bonds; slow the economy, hurt free cash flow, .....
Says in the ToS for this site that children under 13 aren't supposed to use it with out permission from a parent. Why are you here?
Good. There are WAY too many people involved in this company that don't know how to operate in customer service. I'm convinced that no one in the company actually knows anyone else in the company. This exists on multiple levels, consumer/cell/business/fiber. Flashlights wouldn't help them finding their way through an email chain. It's embarrassing that one of the biggest companies in the world can't operate efficiently, OR provide their customers with a quality product, OR provide their customers with additional service to meet the demand (at full price, I'm not even trying to negotiate down here). Washed up, no clue, deal with it. They need a come to Jesus moment. It's unfortunate that they have such a stranglehold on the amount of markets that they do. Hell, their flagship consumer stores don't even answer the phone. This is a telecommunications company....
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Melania Trump, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington DC, 37188
You are welcome on my lawn.
In particular, it gave more breaks for offshore operations, than on-shore. Yeah, Trump gave breaks on-shore, but bigger ones off.
So, this was expected.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Comrade Major Lifeng Wang
14 East Chang'an Street
Dongcheng Qu
Beijing
People's Republic of China
Move to other countries until you desire governance again. There are plenty of places you can find zero government intrusion into your life. Stop whining, get moving.
The staff reductions come despite billions in tax breaks and regulatory favors AT&T promised would dramatically boost both investment and job creation.
I guess my area will never get U-verse. It's been over 10 years and I keep receiving advertisements for their U-verse service.
But the best service I can get is their DSL at 6 Mbps for $40/mo.
Fruitdale Avenue, San Jose.
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Nice work by our Executive Capital Concentration and RIF-Bitch Realization Team. Bonuses for everyone. And remember to show that dour "gloom-and-doom" face for the media.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
You should stop electing people who run on 'government doesn't work', because those people will then set out to prove it.
You need to elect people who WANT government to work. Because those people will then work towards that goal.
The everlasting, yet to discover virus residing in human brains causing the never ending urge to collect $$'s or other considered wealth and power items - long list here omitted - by creating imaginary voids of various kinds to urgently fill without actual need and then to create more voids since it was futile as always requires probably extremely consequent and strong characters - is this Miller-something a type like that - anyway, time to hit the sack!
Any excuse to maximize their bottom line!
Stupid cocksuckers...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What's your alternative plan?
A disappointing feature is the decision to concentrate there rather than to focus away from the overly expensive areas of NY and DC. This would help spread prosperity to other parts of the country.
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
$10,000 cash reward for the above person's real name and home address.
No questions asked.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Now, where's my cash?
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Move to other countries until you desire governance again. There are plenty of places you can find zero government intrusion into your life. Stop whining, get moving.
I hear Somalia is nice this time of year.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Private companies should not need incentives or government handouts to operate. That goes for Tesla, GM bailout, cushy tax breaks, or what ever else Local, State and Federal coffers feel they should hand out. Shouldn't a private company operate on their own, and if they fail they fail. Railroad's have had the luxury of subsides for decades and they still complain they can't make money, upgrade service, or maintain systems. Hey, maybe your not charging enough for your service?
He said no questions! You lose!
You get nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
The problem is that power will not let you complain about this. You will be a radical, a communist, a know-nothing idiot who wants us back in the stone age or to give all your wealth to you, you greedy bastard....
The rhetoric is force fed to society. Same reason why society is "too stupid" to stop falling for religious woo (see the new agism bollocks, replacing christianity for those who find society able to let them stop falling for *christianity*, just not for woo "explanations").
It isn't that society is TOO STUPID, it's that the power structure is forcing a propaganda war to stop you complaining.
So you will blame the left, the right, the immigrants, the managers, the patriarchy, the SJWs, the blacks, the chinese, ANYONE but those who are running the propaganda because in a capitalist society money means power, so you cannot fight those with money, you cannot BLAME those with money. So you have to blame it on some other identifiable group. ANY group.
And, having misdiagnosed the problem, any fixes done to that problem will not fix the actual issue, and so it spirals out of control and we "fall for it again".
What do you think property is?
And more loopholes were added. Ones that benefitted him because it allowed more cash to be funneled through alternatives to salary, reducing the "wage" and therefore the income tax on it.
Try getting into reality. Even though it scares you, comforting lies just make you look like an ignorant asshole.
Without them they MAY be eventually a little less efficient, but they don't need those jobs AT ALL.
So why not just remove them? That would save millions upon millions, possibly even up to the billion when you include the cost of keeping those scroungers busy flying to meetings, company perks, secretarial staff, stock options and golden parachute options.
Democrat party has taken over controll of House and that means MASSIVE tax raises, already they are talk about 70-80 percent tax for everyone. So if you make 30000$ a year, Democrat party will demand you hand over 25000$ to them! No wonder the AT&T is not doing well, Democrat party has been in power agan for just a few days and economy is already for failing.
AT&T is broken. It is too big to function. It is too big to survive.
This entire process is about the stupid amount of debt AT&T is now holding due to the recent buying spree it has been on as of late.
Here's a passage that isn't in the original story:
" It's critical for us to bring employees together to increase the pace of innovation and further develop the right skills in a more open, flexible and efficient work environment. Therefore, our collaboration zones and hub cities become even more integral. "
I read that as the whole " Office 2.0 " bullshit where your workspace is shared with everyone else. They like to claim " collaboration " but, in reality, they're just being cheap.
" further develop the right skills " is downright laughable as AT&T considers training an expense vs an investment. This is why you have the service you do because NO ONE is trained in how to do their job anymore so everyone basically wings it as best they can. Corporate will deny it, but ask any normal employee the last time they saw any standard / formal training* in regards to how to do their job and they will likely tell you Ed Whittacre was still the CEO.
*Some of you will question why this is needed, but remember new hardware arrives all the time. It's akin to being fluent in Cisco for years and they plop a Juniper down in front of you and say " make it work, we're shifting everything new over to Juniper ". When you put critical or customer traffic on this, it's rather important to know what you're doing. ( In my opinion anyway )
Another thing the original story is unaware of is the fact that AT&T is looking at all the real estate it owns ( and it's quite a bit ) to determine if any given building can be shut down and sold off. Basically, if the building doesn't contain enough critical infrastructure for serving the area it resides within, there's a good chance it's on the list. If it contains just a call center, there's a good chance it's already been sold. Their real estate is worth quite a bit and is probably the most efficient method of raising capitol needed to pay down that debt.
I say enough because there are several buildings that are already on the list to be vacated that DO contain systems that have to be moved before it can be sold. These buildings are basically regional locations where network connections across the State consolidate at the distribution layer. All of these connections have to be moved onto new architecture ( in progress ) and each location has a desired timeline for completion. We're talking hundreds and possibly thousands of sites that are fed from these locations that have to be moved. It will take a considerable amount of time ( several years ), money and people to complete.
The problem is, if they continue to slash headcount, they're not going to have enough people left to do the work required to meet those deadlines. As it stands today, with the current headcount, those deadlines are already in trouble. Telling them this tends to fall on deaf ears. Guess they'll figure it out when the deadlines come and go.
What tends to irk me most is:
They keep buying shit with money they don't have. ( DirecTv / Time Warner )
The money AT&T WASTED on the failed T-Mobile merger was ~$5B
The money AT&T wastes on stupid shit like " Stadium Naming Rights " and the like
An executives yearly bonus is more than a non-executive type makes their entire LIFE
Yet, laying people off is their go to answer for saving money :|
they're primarily used to boost the price so that the CEOs get a big paycheck since their bonuses are tied to (and often paid in) stock. This is _exactly_ why stock buy backs were illegal (until Reagan made them legal).
Folks like Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders would be happy to do this if we'd give them more left wing colleges in congress. But these are "Job killing regulations" right? Except that what's really killing jobs is that we let the ruling class gamble with all the money in the country and when they go bust they come out smelling like roses.
I don't think we can let them go bust, either. We're in a hostage situation and always will be without government oversight. We need new rules to protect jobs. To wit:
1. Ban Stock Buy backs.
2. Require public companies to have 50% employee representation on their board of directors or they don't get a charter (and the protections therein).
3. Bring back Glass-Stegal.
4. Undo Bush Jr's commodities market deregulation. Make folks who buy commodities take possession of them so they can't skim 10% off our food supply.
There's lots more. Liz Warren has a fairly comprehensive anti-corruption law she wants to enact.
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Executives will get their bonuses!
Trump's economy.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Somalia is a leftist hell hole.
Somalia was a single-party, Big Government, centrally planned State run according to "scientific" Communism.
Naturally, it failed.
It's not surprising that a culture based on violent coercion produced warlords to fill the power vacuum after the fall (yet again) of a communist regime.
Nevertheless, some ancient tribal trading rules re-emerged; because they are quasi-capitalist, they've allowed the quality of life of the Somalian people to begin to rise, even surpassing the quality of life experienced by the neighboring peoples who live under "stable" governments. This includes food resources and mobile phone technology.
Property is only that which you can successfully defend, but you're going to have a really hard time maintaining that defense unless you can get the other people around you to agree that it's your property.
So, in the end, property is an agreement; that agreement is made in advance of interaction (i.e., it is contractual), The enforcement of this agreement is also voluntary, because such enforcement is part of that agreement.
So, people will either interact with you according to a well defined agreement, or they will interact with you without a well defined agreement. Well defined behavior is safe, but poorly defined behavior is very dangerous, because the ramifications are also poorly defined; agreement tends to be profitable, while a lack of agreement tends to be unprofitable or even anti-profitable. This asymmetry gives rise to Civilized society.
Do you get it yet?
Far be it from me to back big corps but the post is misleading. AT&T weren't specifically given special tax breaks. Every corp in the land got them. Whether they choose to lay off folks is up to them.
Aragorn: Show them no mercy, for you shall receive none.
Corporations might promise the moon in exchange for tax breaks, but they'll never deliver: they are going to rationalize no matter what. If they convince you otherwise, it's because your cloudy Palantir has not yet detected the enemy's secret plan.
Or, you're a politician and you're embedded deep in the corporate kimono already, and you're just pretending to have a myopic Palantir, but in truth cash-on-the-barrel is 20-20.
Melania would make a much better president than the orangutan we elected to the job in 2016!
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
Why are we giving huge tax breaks to corporations only for them to turn around and lay off people? The answer is a sarcastic, "Because corporations ...." More corporate wealthcare I guess.
As suggested here, the argument is that government itself is a monopoly, and the indeed the worse form of monopoly: A government doesn't grow organically through voluntary trade, but is instead imposed violently at the point of a gun.
So, the idea is not that you are sliding toward a bad thing, but rather that government is inherently a bad thing. A government is a dumb man's way of allocating resources. a dumb man thinks there is such thing as Intelligent Design, while a wise man realizes that a complex system requires Evolution by Variation and Selection, the most robust and humane form of which is a free market (interaction according to contracts, the enforcement of which is necessarily voluntary by virtue of being specified in the contract, and which is just a service like any other in society).
The only way to combat tyranny is a separation of powers; the only way to combat tyranny is competition.
You guys always point to the whitest countries as your examples of success (and, incidentally, to the blackest countries as your examples of failure).
If they fire 7000 people, then those people needs new jobs... Right? So that's 7000 new jobs that were created elsewhere by the layoffs.
So, layoffs = new jobs!
THIS is how these corporations thinks.
Forgot to mention that the expected slow growth on stocks will reduce the funding portion of AT&T's pension obligations.
My guess, without looking at the company annual report is that AT&T is assuming 7+ percent stock market increases forever and an inflation rate of 1.5% and a stagnant life expectancy - all of which understate the pension obligations.
Slashing lots of workers, selling off unused real-estate and then doing an IBM move of 'work together is better' to get many people to quit early with reduced retirement is a way to shore up a balance sheet.
Still waiting on AT&T to sell off parts of its pension to Prudential like IBM did a year or two back.
I expect a president somewhere sometime to move entire cabinet departments from the DC area to small-town North Dakota to get tens of thousands of bureaucrats to retire. That's a way to fix the imbalance where 25% of federal budget money is spent within 100 miles of Washington DC - probably the largest geographic subsidy ever in existence.
Bullpussy. OP was correct, ya disingenuous prick. It was REAGAN'S SEC that made the practice legal. Is there really nothing you guys won't try to pin on the Democrats? I have no indications that Clinton had shit to do with stock buybacks during his presidency. Your boi did this. Put up or shut up.
Politicians bribe you with other people's money.
You're not just peacefully voting; you're selecting winners and losers at the point of a gun.
Still sore your Queen was denied here throne, huh?
You are filth.