At the corner of Fourth Avenue and Commerce Street on Aug. 30, a dozen striking AT&T workers held signs for their union — the Communications Workers of America — in the shadow of the so-called Batman Building. Broadway bustled just a block away. Members reminded each other to drink water and whooped and cheered when a passing car honked in support.
“Our members do want to be on the job providing the quality service that our customers deserve,” Loretta Hudson, a rep for the local union chapter, told the Scene. "We want to work. We want to be in there to take care of our customer base. But we also want AT&T to do the right thing by us.”
On a typical weekday — the picket took place on a Friday — Hudson works inside the skyscraper in AT&T’s business collections division. Last year, the company reported $122 billion in revenue.
More than 700 AT&T employees — 99 percent of the local unionized workforce — have joined the strike in Middle Tennessee according to Josh Foster, president of the CWA Local 3808. They join 17,000 striking across nine states in the Southeast and Puerto Rico.
Employees are covered under semiregular contracts often spanning a number of years. The union and AT&T began renegotiating its most recent contract, which had covered employees for five years, earlier this summer, but failed to reach an agreement by the time the contract lapsed on Aug. 1. Workers went on strike two weeks later, on Aug. 15.
CWA members also allege that AT&T had been bargaining in bad faith, violating legal standards of the National Labor Relations Board. Union reps had failed to reach an agreement with the corporation because, they claim, AT&T sent representatives to the negotiating table who lacked the authority to approve a new contract.
In response, the CWA filed an unfair labor practice complaint in August, prompting a separate legal process and inviting federal oversight to the bargaining table.
Union reps and corporate executives are currently holed up in Atlanta working toward a resolution.
“In our district, basically every state is a right-to-work state,” Foster tells the Scene this week. “For us to hold the line as fiercely as we have, for weeks, that really says something about how much we believe in what we're doing.”
On Thursday, AT&T chief operating officer Jeff McElfresh gave Reuters the following in a statement: “We have made a strong final offer to the CWA District 3 in the Southeast. We believe that this offer, if accepted, would provide our employees with competitive market-based pay that exceeds projected inflation.”
