Tentative Deal Reached in AT&T Midwest Talks

by James Parks, Jul 15, 2009

After nearly five months of negotiations, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and AT&T today reached a tentative agreement in contract negotiations covering some 18,500 employees in the telecom company’s Midwest region.

The union will submit the agreement to the district’s membership for a ratification vote. The current contract expired April 4, and employees have worked under terms of the expired deal while negotiations continued.

The three-year proposed agreement includes pay and pension increases in each year of the pact, as well as provisions addressing cost-of-living adjustments. Employees will retain their health care benefits. 

The agreement also includes new transfer opportunities and other employment-security gains that strengthen AT&T’s quality workforce. The agreement also creates broader earnings and job opportunities for some sales titles and premises technicians, who install AT&T services at customers’ homes.

CWA President Larry Cohen says the negotiations reflected the current tough economic times and demonstrate again that the current health care structure in the United States is unsustainable.

This tentative agreement maintains our members’ standard of living and safeguards quality health care benefits, which is critical to the well-being of all families. It’s important now to move forward in the remaining negotiations and resolve our outstanding issues.

I’m pleased that AT&T will continue to work with us and others on comprehensive health care reform, so that companies like AT&T that provide quality health care are no longer penalized in this country.

For details of the tentative agreement, click here.

Negotiations are continuing in four other regions where CWA contracts expired April 4.

Members of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) are also in talks with AT&T in Illinois and northwestern Indiana where contracts expired June 27. CWA contracts in AT&T’s Southeast region expire Aug. 8, and negotiations begin in that region July 20. A total of some 120,000 employees are covered under the various contracts.

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