News from Communications Workers of America – District 6

Date:     March 28, 2008          Contact:    Andy Milburn  

                                               AT&T CEO says Hard to Find Skilled U.S. Workers

On Wednesday of this week, it was reported that Randall Stephenson, CEO for AT&T, stated that “We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” referring to the 5,000 customer service jobs the company promised to return to the U.S. from India.

The truth is AT&T stopped hiring last summer, when the workers overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement between its union, CWA and AT&T.

AT&T contracts thousands of jobs to vendors to perform customer service.  The vendors don’t have any difficulty hiring workers and neither does AT&T.  The problem lies with expecting U.S. citizens to work for the same wages paid in India.

Since Mr. Stephenson appears to be concerned about the high school drop-out rate, then let him explain why the decision was made to reduce the amount of dollars the company is willing to spend on tuition reimbursement for its own employees for college courses.

At least this time when Mr. Stephenson spoke, he didn’t drive down the price of the AT&T stock.