Union sues AT&T over merger effects - Halts Layoffs....

[Breeze54]

Union sues AT&T over merger effects

http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/33580529.html

Web Posted: 10/30/2008 11:34 CDT

By Sanford Nowlin - Express-News

The Communications Workers of America union has sued AT&T Inc. and its major subsidiaries to “halt the company’s use of corporate shell games to avoid contractual obligations” to union members.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio, charges that telecommunications company has used recent corporate reorganizations to wriggle out of union contracts that affect employee wages, benefits, seniority and working conditions.

AT&T officials had no immediate comment on the suit, although a corporate spokesman said it would issue a statement shortly.

Through a series of major acquisitions, AT&T bought up many of the companies created with the breakup of the old Bell System — Southwestern Bell, Ameritech, BellSouth and Pacific Telesis among them.

The mergers, the suit claims, allowed the “New AT&T” to eliminate old business units, shuffle workers and change wages and benefits promised to workers under contracts the old companies had with the union.

“The company has been using reorganization, we claim, to get out of those contractual obligations,” CWA spokeswoman Candice Johnson said.

CWA represents almost 200,000 of AT&T’s 310,000 workers.

Current AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson moved the company’s headquarters to Dallas from San Antonio earlier this year, but it still has 5,300 workers here and its landline division remains based in the Alamo City.

The company and CWA had a largely friendly relationship under former CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. However, management and the union occasionally found themselves at odds.

About 100,000 workers staged a four-day walkout after AT&T — then called SBC Communications Inc. — and the union’s contract talks bogged down after months of tough negotiations. The union and the company ultimately reached an agreement that halted company layoffs but required employees to pay slightly more for health benefits.

The lawsuit asks the court for injunctions that would force AT&T to honor its obligations under collective bargaining agreements with CWA. It also asks the court to force the company to recognize all subsidiaries’ existing union contracts.

“We need to have accountability,” CWA’s Johnson said. “And we need to have the company honor the its obligations under the collective bargaining agreements.”

I hope that means that my sons layoffs were also halted!!