AT&T Legacy T Bargaining Report #17

Today the Company only had one proposal on Appendix 3. It is important because it determines the “organizations” for the purposes of surplus and recall. The issue had been discussed in subcommittee and there was no problem with their proposal.

The majority of the session dealt with the Construction Tech title. This is a title that had shrunk to just 37 people after years of outsourcing of the work. The intent of our demand is to increase the numbers in that title by restoring work that had been taken away from them and given to contractors. Due to years of great research by a longtime Construction Technician, Greg Detterbeck, CWA bargainer Roy Hegenbart was able to present a very detailed explanation of work that we had previously done that we no longer do. Part of this work is inspecting the work that is done by contractors. In a typical case of “the fox guarding the chicken house”, AT&T has contractors inspecting the work of contractors, instead of it being done by AT&T employees. Roy was able to show pictures of shoddy and dangerous work that had been done and inspected by these contractors. According to his statement, “Currently we estimate there are 40 to 50 major projects throughout the country. Moving the inspection responsibility to Construction Techs not only creates jobs but has another advantage, it restores integrity back into the network in Outside Plant.”

While AT&T keeps trying to lump us into the “old wireline business,” Ernie Carey, Senior Vice President of Construction and Engineering, was recently quoted as saying, “About 70 to 80% of Construction and Engineering’s daily work is associated with our wireless business … Our wireline C&E team accomplished more of that in 2011 than anyone has ever done in a single year anywhere.”

Hopefully the Company will pay some serious attention to our proposal.

Getting work back from contractors, both domestically and off-shore, is a huge issue in many of our titles, and one we hopefully can address this bargaining.

We will not be meeting with the Company this weekend as we prepare our proposals for next week. The next report will be on Monday.

Time to step up mobilization. Tomorrow is just TWO WEEKS from expiration.

Your Bargaining Team