The Communications Workers of America, the union representing striking AT&T workers, has informed the telephone company and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service that it no longer will participate in negotiations, according to Reuters.
The strike, which began in mid-August, involves more than 17,000 employees in nine states. As is common in labor disputes, the sides are blaming each other.
“As we’ve shared, our goal is to reach fair and competitive agreements that recognize the hard work our employees do to serve our customers, with market-based pay and benefits tied to cost of living and projected inflation data,” according to an AT&T strike update. “This is true for all employees, management and non-management alike” (bold in original).
A CWA press release about the AT&T strike uses a quote that originated with television station WBTW and uploaded by media monitoring site TVeyes.com:
“We have people that pull up here tell us that they are standing behind us, that they feel like we’re doing what we need to do,” RC Lee, President of CWA Local 3708 in Florence, South Carolina, said. “None of my people want to be without a paycheck. They all want to go to work, they all want to get paid, they all want to take care of their families and meet their financial obligations. And they’re all passing on that to strike here now, because that’s how important this is.”
AT&T operations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee are impacted by the strike.
The AT&T strike takes place as the telecommunications gets a tremendous level of investment. In July, the CWA looked at broadband projects being funded by the State and Local Recovery Funds (SLFRF) element of the American Rescue Plan. It graded 14 projects on three criteria. One project got a perfect score of 20 — and another only a 3.
