Bargaining Bulletin #22

CWA District 9/AT&T West
Bargaining Bulletin #22
Thursday, March 26, 2009

1 Union 1 Fight 1 Future

Subcommittee meetings resumed today in a continued effort to resolve the issues around Article 2 and Memorandums of Agreement. The formal session began with CWA Bargaining Chair Tom Runnion reading from Washington MarketWatch that AT&T is viewed as a safe vessel, a place for investors to stash cash and ride out the latest market storm. He also added that in the view of many Wall Street analysts AT&T seems more like the Queen Mary 2, the world’s largest ocean liner and not like a modern-day Titanic. Its declining wire line has shown signs of stabilizing after a rough patch in 2008. Barring an outright economic collapse, analysts insist the company can not only maintain its current dividend, now yielding above 7% but perhaps even raise it again in the future. As waves of bad corporate and economic news sink values of one blue-chip company after another, among the few that continue to steam ahead is AT&T inc. Tom reiterated the Union maintains that this is a highly profitable company and our members deserve and expect a fair contract and to benefit from the current and future profits. With that said, we rejected the company retrogressive proposals on the Premises Technician, “Leveraged title”, sickness absence pay, FMLA time, and overtime. The Union then passed two proposals. The first proposed that the company join the Union for National Health Care Reform. The second, on Evolving Technologies, proposed that CWA core contracts cover all work resulting from new technological developments. This would include Network operations, customer service activities, technical support, customer premise work, and connect tech work. The Company had nothing to offer today.
9 days and counting…

IN UNITY,
Bill Demers
Pam Suniga
Art Gonzalez
Tom Runnion
William B. Harvey
Lupe Mercado