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Businesses AT&T Communications The Internet

AT&T Cuts Another 1,800 Jobs As It Finishes Fiber-Internet Buildout (arstechnica.com) 54

Posted by BeauHD from the no-longer-needed dept.
AT&T is planning to cut another 1,800 jobs from its wireline division. "Last week, AT&T declared more than 1,800 jobs nationwide as 'surplus,' meaning they are slated to be eliminated in August or September," reports Ars Technica, citing the Communications Workers of America (CWA). From the report: "They've been cutting their employment massively in the past year and a half or so," with cuts affecting both union and non-union jobs, CWA Communications Director Beth Allen told Ars. Under union contracts, AT&T can declare a surplus of jobs each quarter, she said. But even by AT&T standards, last week's surplus declaration "was a very large number," Allen said. Jobs that are declared "surplus" are taken off the payroll, CWA says. AT&T told Ars that most affected union workers will be able to stay at the company in other positions. But letters from AT&T to the CWA say that only 27 of about 550 employees declared "surplus" in the Southwest division will be given so-called "follow-the-work" opportunities in which they can take nearly identical jobs in other locations.

Follow-the-work offers are given when an employee's specific job is consolidated with another position or moved to another geographic location, AT&T said. This is different from the job-offer guarantee that ensures "surplus" employees will be offered a different type of job in the company; AT&T didn't say exactly how many surplus employees will get those offers. The 1,800 newly announced AT&T job cuts affect wireline technicians who fix customer problems, install new service, and who work on AT&T's fiber expansion, Allen said. Over the past four years, AT&T expanded its fiber-to-the-home network to 12.5 million customer locations to meet a government mandate imposed on its purchase of DirecTV. But AT&T is apparently slowing its fiber deployments now that it has finished the government-mandated buildout.
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AT&T Cuts Another 1,800 Jobs As It Finishes Fiber-Internet Buildout More

AT&T Cuts Another 1,800 Jobs As It Finishes Fiber-Internet Buildout

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  • What are they going to do? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @07:58PM (#58779364)
    Temporary workers are temporary workers, union or not. What are they supposed to do with them when they've finished the job they were hired to do?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why do you immediately rush to the huge multinational corporations rhetorical defense for announcing layoffs, I think, would be an appropriate side question.. why do they need defending for terminating their employees at end of contract?

      • Re:What are they going to do? (Score:5)

        by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @08:37PM (#58779534)
        This isn't a layoff, it's the completion of a job. No one is terminated at the end of a contract, the contract is either renewed or it's not. I hire someone to mow my lawn once every two to three weeks. Am I supposed to find something else for him to do the other days to "keep him employed"? As for jumping to the defense of a huge multinational, I'm not. I couldn't care less about AT&T, and wish they would be broken back up, but there's nothing to defend in letting people go after they've completed the job they were hired to do. It would be nice for them to find some other job for them to do (and according to TFS, they are for some), but they should not have to keep paying someone when they have no work for them. Also, moving them to another job eliminates that position for someone else, so the employment ratio remains the same either way.
        • Instead, you hire somebody to maintain your golf course lawn for two weeks and lay them off periodically to save a buck instead of finding something useful for them to do. Then you fight tooth and nail to avoid paying unemployment.

          AT&T got trillions (with a T) in subsidies to build out nationwide fiber and just plain never did it. It's been going on for decades. There's no excuse for firing these people.

          There's plenty of work for them to do. I say we fire AT&T ourselves and let the gov't hir

    • The issue is that there is still more work to be done; the government just hasn’t mandated that they do it. It is a shame for them to cut back, although I am excited to drop ATT service at work soon.

    • due to the expansion they would do with the money from the Trump tax cuts. Far from firing them they should have been hired.

      Also, enough already with temporary workers. Ban temp work. Make companies hire and pay their unemployment insurance. AT&T isn't a fly by night. If they want employees they should bloody well pay for them. If the work is unrelated to their core business hire a vendor. If it's related, hire an employee.

      I'm fed up with my friends getting stuck in "temp" jobs that go for exact
    • Why can't they just fire everyone at CNN?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bjwest ( 14070 )
        Maybe because the people at CNN don't work for AT&T? It's pretty hard to fire people who don't work for you. And if anyone needs to be fired (and jailed, most of them) it's the people over at Faux News.

  • Allow me to shed some light on this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @10:24PM (#58779820)

    First, I'm surprised it's even getting any media attention at all since AT&T has been doing these types of layoffs multiple times a year for the past several years without much of a mention. This is all because T can't quit buying shit they don't have money for. So now they're laying off as many as they can while selling Real Estate ( buildings ) in an effort to bring the debt levels down.

    Quick tangent here but what T doesn't understand is this: They've always operated from a Monopoly or Regional Monopoly position where competition was at or near zero. The areas they're wanting to get into ( Cloud, Content Provider, etc ) is chock full of competition who is not only very well established, but also well funded and not up to their eyeballs in debt. T doesn't have the innovation to operate within a competitive environment and they're likely going to get their ass handed to them if they try. Just my opinion though. Back to the topic at hand :D

    The layoffs are not limited to what is considered " temporary work " such as Premise Techs ( who installed U-Verse ). This iteration hit a lot of Customer Service Rep positions around the country as well as quite a lot of outside techs ( Splicers, Systems Techs, etc ) whereas the one in the Jan / Feb time frame targeted a lot of management positions. The one in Jan was based solely on the zipcode you worked in. If your reporting location wasn't within a " Collaboration Zone " then you were a candidate for getting laid off.

    ( Personally, I think T is targeting their older workforce because they're grandfathered into the Pension Plan, but that's just my opinion. I'll let the EEOC handle that one. )

    It didn't matter how many years of service you had. It didn't matter if you were a Rockstar or drooled on yourself all day long. It didn't matter if you had expertise and / or experience in unique equipment. If you didn't work in the right zip codes, they simply told you good bye. For management, they were required to sign an NDA if they wanted to retain their severance pay.

    Generally, the mood at the Company is rather poor since everyone pretty much expects to be walked out the door at any moment. After seeing the Company walk Rockstars out the door, the motivation to go " above and beyond " pretty much got torpedoed and sank in the harbor. Folks are just in survival mode now. Especially those who are within a year or two of retirement.

    Quite a bit of work going untouched as the folks who made the decisions to lay off X employees didn't really have a plan in place about what to do with all the work X employees did. Lots of projects still on time tables that have to get done by Y date but, after laying off entire groups ( with specialized skills ) who were doing those projects, there isn't anyone left who knows anything about the systems / equipment / networks to DO the work.

    Go ahead, tell me you can hire anyone off the street and expect them to understand or learn technology that was in use for decades before they were even BORN. ( No, there won't be any training. If you're lucky, you might get a .pdf describing what it is. Maybe. There hasn't been any tech training at T since the company ceased being SBC. )

    In short, it's a fucking circus.

    Here's a link to a .pdf showing locations and numbers of non-management that got selected for this round. There will likely be another round in the last quarter of the year for non-management. Who knows how many more for mgmt folks.

    https://actionnetwork.org/user... [actionnetwork.org]

    • Afterthought: The .pdf is only for CWA District 6 ( SW Region of the US ) many, many more were selected from other regions across the country.

  • ATT has barely begun installing fiber internet, if we are to understand it as Gigabit ethernet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      ATT has barely begun installing fiber internet, if we are to understand it as Gigabit ethernet.

      That was my thought: so this means I can get fiber to my home? No? Well, shit, then I guess it's not finished.

    • EXACTLY what I came here to post. We've got 2 choices in my neighborhood: "Bob's Cable Service" (Suddenlink) and AT&T. The local neighborhood web board is constantly complaining about Suddenlink's service outages. AT&T is reliable but throughput is 20 Mbs. Where is fibrechannel? I'd even take something like cable's speed of 200 Mbs.

  • Ironic how management jobs are never declared "surplus" or "redundant" even though the people in those roles are almost always the ones that fuck things up.

  • WTF AT&T. I live in ostensibly the biggest tech hub on earth, and I can't get fiber to the home. I think it's time for municipal broadband. AT&T and comcast are just not up to the job.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't AT&T promise a whole lot of jobs to be created by the recent corporate tax cut? Because if my memory doesn't fail me it sounds an awful lot like what AT&T is doing is the exact opposite of what they promised.

    Then again this was probably to be expected seeing how "Everyone needs to do more with less people and less money" seems to be a company policy as this has even spread to HBO after their acquisition not too long ago. I'm particularly worried about what will

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