The Broken Promises Tour Has Been A Huge Success, And We've Gotten Terrific Press Coverage Along The Way.
August 10, 2018
TO: CWA D4 Local Officers - AT&T Midwest Bargaining Unit
Dear Colleagues:
This week, three CWA members from the Midwest and Legacy T have been traveling from Detroit to Dallas to bring attention to AT&T's broken promises and to our fight for a fair contract.
The Broken Promises Tour has been a huge success, and we've gotten terrific press coverage along the way. Today, Jeremy, Laheelah and Kelly delivered over 100,000 petition signatures to AT&T headquarters from CWA members and our allies telling AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that they support good jobs and a fair union contract for working people at AT&T.
We clearly got the company's attention. Today, many of you received a message claiming to "set the record straight" on AT&T's tax reform windfall and job creation.
AT&T likes to make a big deal about how many people they have hired, but as you know all too well, hiring to replace vacancies is not the same as creating jobs. Talk about misleading. AT&T's own quarterly reports show the decline in employment of over 7,000 jobs just this year.
Frankly, it's insulting that AT&T would try to convince us that what we see happening around us each and every day isn't really happening. Where's the job-creating investment in our communities? Why is so much work still going to contractors? If AT&T has so much extra money to invest in buying back its own stock, why does the company want to take more money out of our pockets to pay for health care coverage?
The company may be trying to weasel out of the promises they made, but we heard them loud and clear. During a town hall meeting for employees in December, this is what Randall Stephenson said:
"We did announce that if a version of the House Bill, something close to it, were to pass, we will, AT&T, we will step our capital investment up a billion dollars and our rule of thumb is every billion dollars of additional capital we invest is 7,000 jobs. And these are 7,000 good, hard hat jobs, these are not just any . . . you know these are not minimum wage kind of jobs, these are really high paying jobs. And so it's a really big deal."
Additionally, Stephenson has said:
"The arithmetic for us is simple: For every billion dollars of additional investment we make, is 7,000 additional jobs we have to put on to put that capital into the ground or on cell towers and so forth," adding that those jobs would likely be hard hat jobs that pay well.
So yes, we are going to keep letting everyone know about the difference between AT&T's promises and the reality we face every day. We are going to continue to mobilize and continue to tell our stories to the press. Together we will win this fight.
In Solidarity,
Linda L. Hinton
Vice President
CWA District 4
