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AT&T Businesses The Almighty Buck Technology

AT&T Sheds Thousands of Employees After Touting GOP Tax Plan, Giving Out Bonuses (appleinsider.com) 105

Posted by BeauHD from the double-speak dept.
Prior to Christmas, AT&T and DirecTV gave layoff notices to a large number of landline, legacy service, and home installers spanning the country. "It is not clear if the firings relate to the pending AT&T and Time Warner acquisition, or how it specifically relates to the announcement that the company was giving $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 employees in commemoration of the tax overhaul signed just before Christmas," reports Apple Insider. Slashdot reader deadwill69 writes: Just more doublespeak after they announced their bonus program to justify the tax cuts. Seems they really didn't mean it after all. "Technology improvements are driving higher efficiencies, and there are some areas where demand for our legacy services continues to decline, and we're adjusting our workforce in some of those areas as we continue to align our workforce with the changing needs of the business," AT&T said in a statement to the Chicago Tribune. "Many of the affected employees have a job offer guarantee that ensures they'll be offered another job with the company, and we'll work to find other jobs for as many of them as possible." Let's hope they keep that promise. On a bright note: their service really couldn't get much worse?
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AT&T Sheds Thousands of Employees After Touting GOP Tax Plan, Giving Out Bonuses More

AT&T Sheds Thousands of Employees After Touting GOP Tax Plan, Giving Out Bonuses

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  • Union had already negotiated bonus (Score:5, Informative)

    by rminsk ( 831757 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @03:48PM (#55830213)
    The workers union, Communication Workers of America, were trying to negotiate a raise of $4000 for the workers. The $1000 bonus came out of those talks earlier in the year. AT&T’s announcement comes one week after the company reached a new contract agreement with its workers. The contract came after a year of pressure from the workers’ union.
  • Earlier this year, AT&T was selected to be the broadband provider for First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) to build and manage the first broadband network dedicated to America’s police, firefighters and emergency medical services (EMS). The FirstNet network will cover all 50 states, 5 U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, including rural communities and tribal lands in those states and territories.
    http://about.att.com/story/fir... [att.com]

  • NOT THAT TIME WARNER (Score:5, Informative)

    by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @03:54PM (#55830263)
    AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner the media company (Warner Brothers Studios, Turner Broadcasting, HBO, etc), not Time Warner Cable (TWC) the cable company which Charter already bought.

    Just putting it out there before the inevitable posts about AT&T buying another ISP.

  • Trickle down economics doesn't work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @03:55PM (#55830279)
    And everybody knows this. What's crazy is that 32% of the population still support this bill (I'm not counting the 1% of the 33%). On the other hand 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Sure, the $1.5 trillion in new debt from this bill is already being used to by Paul Ryan et al argue for entitlement 'reform' (e.g. taking them away from anyone under 55). But you know what? A lot of us are just trying to make it until our kids are on their own. Sure, best case this is $200/mo in your pocket per person. But if you and your wife both suddenly have $400/mo that's a car payment and gas.

    Bills like this take advantage of the desperate situation most Americans find themselves in. What sucks the most is, that entire situation is completely by design...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
      Of course. And Trump has been running ads on TV "thanking him" from "lowering taxes". It was a plan that worked perfectly. Here is $2. Just don't notice I am taking $20,000. Trickle down economics does work though - it just doesn't work for those that aren't on top.

      • Why are you ignoring the hiring? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:18PM (#55830413)

        Over 200k people got bonuses (and also lower taxes), that's much better than a few thousand being laid off.

        It also does not detract from the many other companies that gave bonuses also...

        Meanwhile AT&T is also hiring into new positions, why is that not factored in? Some jobs will always be lost, and others gained. That has nothing to do with the tax bill - they will ramp up hiring as they already said [att.com]: "Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 jobs for American workers, research shows.". It's still a net gain of workers in the end.

        • Those two things aren't related (Score:4, Informative)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:41PM (#55830569)
          to the tax cuts, any more than the bonuses were. The Bonuses were a hard fought and hard won victory by the Union that AT&T is taking credit for. What's more, they were a pyrrhic victory; the Union was trying to get pay raises but thanks to our shit economy for workers (which somehow posts record stock market wins every other day) they couldn't.

          Similarly, AT&T isn't hiring because of the Tax cuts, their CEO admitted that already. They're hiring because they need workers. Again, Trickle down doesn't work. Businesses hire workers to meet demand. You're trying to put cart before horse. Giving the rich money doesn't increase demand because one person can only spend so much in a day.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Xyrus ( 755017 )

          The bonuses had nothing to do with the tax cut. That was part of a union negotiation from earlier this year. Needless to say, it was likely the firing of those employees that lead to the bonuses for the others.

          And stop calling it a tax-cut. That's BS marketing. You don't call a cash advance on a credit card a paycheck do you? The tax scam borrowed a huge chucnk of money, gave most of it to the rich and corporations, and then limited the cuts on everyone else so that when the bill comes due it's the middle c

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I call BS on that one. Right now, the US has the best economy ever. We have full employment, the Dow is at record levels, and only climbing. The people whining about work are the ones too lazy to actually go get jobs. With this tax cut, it means every American essentially has 15-20% more cash in their pocket, which only will further help things, as when people buy stuff, more workers are needed.

      The "desperate situation" is one of entitlement and laziness. The jobs are out there, but it might actually t

  • More conspiracy crap (Score:4, Informative)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:19PM (#55830419)

    The Cable/Satellite TV market in the USA is dying on its feet, thanks to the big companies refusing to be flexible and alternative services like Netflix providing better options for less. The layoffs are all legacy/TV related and simply reflect this.

  • At any given time in a large company 10-20% either don't have a job, or are underperformers. Companies that do not regularly purge this dead weight will basically turn into a typical government agency (30-40% dead weight) and go bankrupt shortly there after.

    To act like this is some evil activity to fuck over the little guy is a level of stupid only found in academia (60-75% dead weight)

  • "People aren't buying as many satellite dishes as we'd planned."

  • This article is laughable. Large companies are constantly, every single day, laying off employees somewhere, someplace. And if they are a growing company, as most successful companies are, they actually add more employees than they lay off. AT&T has 273,000 employees total and laying off 600+700+215 equates to 0.55% of their total workforce and no where near any definition of a "large number" of employees.

    Cry me a River, snowflakes.

    Any which way you measure it, the US economy is booming and every one of

  • Just adding my firsthand experience at AMD. I was working there in 1988 during the presidential campaign. There were lots of rumors that the company was in trouble and needed to start laying people off, but...

    The owner of the company was a big supporter of Poppy Bush. Lots of "Don't worry, be happy" messages were distributed.

    After the election and Poppy's victory, the message changed. "Off with their heads."

    I actually survived those cuts, but the rise of Quayle contributed strongly to my decision to leave t

  • AT&T and DirecTV gave layoff notices to a large number of landline, legacy service, and home installers spanning the country ...
    the company was giving $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 employees in commemoration of the tax overhaul ...

    Apparently those bonuses will be in lieu of paychecks. Sounds like a win-win for corporations and politicians.

  • I love that one. It's right up there with "trickle-down economics" and "tree pollution. [rationalwiki.org]"

    Here's how that works:

    1. You work for MegaCorp in City A. You've lived here for 10 years. You're settled in, and around 40 on the age scale, with a wife and two kids.

    2. You're told you're going to be laid off, but they have a job for you in City R, some 700 miles away. The job is yours, if you're willing to move. They'll even give you a moving incentive? But no raise.

    3. You pull up stakes, pack up your family, p

  • Nice articles . Free Job Alert [indianjobs4u.in]

  • I see a lot of commenters crowing about how much more value they deliver than the people who got laid off. Pretty soon, the axe is coming for everyone who isn't an executive as companies figure out a way to automate or eliminate work done by people altogether. That's the big long-term thing we have to worry about.

    I guess I'm one of those people who want a corporate class that's more loyal toward their employees. It was only a few decades ago that people didn't have to hop from job to job every few years, up

  • From the summary: On a bright note: their service really couldn't get much worse?

    The noise on my land line got worse and worse. I called ATT, they sent out an idiot. I explained the problem; the idiot says, "You probably have a little short." Needless to say the idiot couldn't fix the problem. I canceled my land line and haven't missed it, especially the endless sales calls, most of which had faked originating phone numbers.

  • The landline phone business and cable TV businesses are both dying. I cut the cable a couple years ago for my TV. When I traded my landline for an IP phone about seven years ago, I discovered that I was almost the last among my Silicon Valley co-workers to do it. The Republican tax plan doesn't have anything to do with this; it is just the dying gasp of a couple obsolete businesses.

  • What would laying off wireline and other legacy installers have to do with the Time Warner acquisition? What would it have to do with anything other than, I dunno, LEGACY TELCO STUFF IS DYING.

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