AT&T Legacy T Bargaining Report #13

We had a busy day today at the Legacy T bargaining table.

• The Company rejected our proposal to make Martin Luther King Day and Veteran’s Day fixed holidays. They are still looking to take away the Day After Thanksgiving, and are now proposing it be replaced with an employee-chosen (as opposed to a Company-chosen) floater. The bottom line is that taking away any fixed holiday puts money in the Company’s pocket, since they don’t have to pay holiday pay for working the fixed holiday.
• On termination pay they rejected our proposal to put everyone on the schedule that tops out at 104 weeks. The Company now wants to add more people to those in the articles that already have lower term pay schedules (like Articles 39, 43, 44, and 45). They want to change Article 25 so new hires will all be on a schedule that maxes out at 45 weeks. They are determined to have a Two Tier work force on everything from term pay to pensions to benefits.
• The Company rejected our proposal for a bi-lingual differential with the absurd statement, “Even if you are doing it in different language, it’s still the same work.” Yes, it’s the same work, but the employee must do it in TWO languages!!! They deserve something for that additional skill.
• They also rejected our proposal that addressed the problem of Union representatives who are off the job for Union business, being denied coverage under FMLA.

The Union proposed a city upgrade for Washington, DC and the area around it. The cost of living is much higher than many cities in higher wage zones.

The Union also proposed an improvement in the pension for those under both the traditional plan and the Cash Balance Account. This is the statement on the issue our CWA bargainer Mary Ellen Mazzeo presented at the table:

“The CWA Legacy T bargaining team was perplexed, to say the least, when the Company presented Slide 18 on retirement income in their Compensation package on March 1st.

“The slide stated that ‘AT&T provides wireline employees with the opportunity and resources to plan for the future, building a secure and healthy retirement fund.’ It went on to illustrate that a network technician could achieve 111% of their pre-retirement income, while a call center representative could achieve 116%.

“This is not accurate as it applies to our members in Legacy T. We looked more carefully at these claims made by AT&T. As we went through our minutes for March 1st, we found that the talking points for this slide added the word ‘most’. So ‘AT&T provides wireline employees with the opportunity and resources to plan for the future, building a secure and healthy retirement fund’ actually means ‘AT&T provides most wireline employees with the opportunity…’ Of course, ‘most’ is a key word. Legacy T employees do not fit into the ‘most’ category or even the ‘average’ category in this retirement scenario. Over 60% of our active employees are covered by the Cash Balance Account. A third of these employees will be eligible for retirement within the next 5 years. Sadly, their opportunity via the pension plan and the 401(k) falls far short of the 100+% indicated on Slide 18. In fact, most of these members will not even have the opportunity to reach the 70-80% target that the US Social Security Administration says will be needed.

“We are encouraged by the Company’s opening statement in which they said, ‘We value our longstanding cooperative relationship with the CWA and our strong foundation of working together to maintain excellent union jobs with good benefits.’

“We need to build upon this foundation to ensure that slide 18 applies to CWA members in Legacy T as well as CWA members in the other core contracts. This proposal, coupled with our proposal on Friday for the 401(k) match at 100%, will move our Legacy T members in the right direction in building a secure and healthy retirement fund.”

Finally, the Union is still waiting for crucial information we need to prepare our response to the Company’s Health Care cost shifting proposal. We have to suspect that the Company has a reason for their foot-dragging, and are anxiously awaiting their response.

Today, the Team all wore our “WTF- Where’s The Fairness?” stickers and based, on the Company responses today, they clearly fit the bill. Hopefully you are all wearing them out in your offices also.