AT&T, the second largest wireless carrier in the United States, has reportedly made no headway in talks with unionized workers and the Communication Workers of America since a strike just over a week ago. There have been no comments from either side toward the media about anything moving forward, and no reports of agreements being reached. AT&T, for its part, did say that they are determined to work things out with the CWA and the AT&T employees who have associated with it. They also noted that they had reached an agreement with union workers in Indiana and Illinois, but on an unrelated topic. The CWA did not issue any sort of comment on the matter at hand.
To recap, the aforementioned strike is the first large-scale one that AT&T’s wireless employees have ever taken part in, and involved somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 employees across all of AT&T’s nationwide divisions. The three day strike crippled AT&T’s operations over last weekend from mid-day Friday all the way until Monday morning. That strike came after an ultimatum that threatened a strike if no deal was reached on Friday. That ultimatum, in turn, came from the aftermath of a mass demonstration at a shareholder meeting in Texas.
AT&T and the CWA have been going back and forth in this nature for a number of years. Workers cite a number of grievances, such as excessive outsourcing, poor contract terms, and a lack of profitable investment in AT&T’s core business interests, which would help to invigorate the company’s reputation and funding. These issues have had strikes similar to this one organized over them in the past, but this has been the largest yet, and marks the beginning of the wireless segment, one of AT&T’s largest employee bases and profit makers, jumping into the fight in an organized fashion. It’s safe to say that the 40,000 employees who ate a loss of income and risked their jobs to strike are dedicated to the cause, which means that the total number is incredibly likely to only grow as the battle rages on. This, in turn, means that AT&T has a clear motivation to end the dissidence quickly and amicably.