AT&T Legacy T Bargaining Report #9

At today’s bargaining session, we spent much of the time reviewing a series of “policy” letters the Company has informed the Union it wants to implement. We intend to bargain over each one.

• AT&T wants to discontinue the practice of providing “conditional pay” while confirming the approval of a disability after the 8th day of absence.
• AT&T wants to discontinue the practice of distributing paper pay checks and use pay cards for those who do not want to opt for electronic transfer of their pay.
• AT&T wants to charge employees for administrative costs if the government or the courts require garnishment of their pay.

The majority of our questions centered around a plan to require NTS techs, CEIIIs, and other plant employees who interface with customers to wear branded AT&T apparel. That program is currently voluntary. In addition to wearing the apparel, the program comes with an extremely invasive “appearance standards” guideline. It addresses cleanliness – “freshly bathed in fresh clean clothing.” There are guidelines for hair length and styles, beard stubble, and even when you can grow a beard or mustache (only during vacation periods.) There are rules about the kinds of belt buckles, footwear, socks, and jewelry you wear. There’s even a guideline on how high or low someone can wear their pants. They even had to admit that, the way the policy is written, an employee would not be able to wear an American flag pin or a belt buckle that shows the employee is a veteran. For a company that worries about people wasting time on the job, whoever thought up these rules was clearly wasting their work time. We asked many questions the Company could not respond to, and we will definitely resist these ridiculous proposals by the Company.

Also, in today’s session, the Company rejected our demand to remove appraisals as a determining factor in the wage increases of employees in Article 45.

We’re sure you can find interesting and creative ways to show the Company what you think about their policies, or mobilize around any one of the other outrageous demands the Company has presented over the last two weeks. The key is to mobilize.