Word is that in district 3 company is pushing to combine two job titles (digital technicians aka special services and systems technicians aka cpe/past the demarc techs) so that they get one truck roll
on business dispatches. I know district 9 (CA & NV) already made this one title on their last contract
in 2016. My question is to the people in district 4 and 6 . Do they still have att techs doing cpe work
(phone systems, servers, Cisco routers....) or has it been vendored/farmed out. If it hasn't been farmed out then are the two titles seperate or have they been combined like district 9?
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Just look at the work transition/direction over the last 2 years as John Locus came in as VP of FOB and John Regan moved over to TFS-SW. Regan came from the CPE/Managed Services side of the business and had no prior experience with Specials at all. Surplus in Specials became the name of the game for a couple of years while he went after huge CPE/Managed Services contracts. He did almost get DEG move completely into Business Services before the VP swap happened though, which would have revitalized Specials to some degree, but that got squashed by Locus as soon as he came in. Locus was previously over POTS/Broadband and most recently VP of the national FaST team so he had a better idea about Specials, but zero experience with CPE. Under his regime, the core CPE business is now slowly dying and he has gone out and ripped non-designed U-Verse work away from IEFS and TFS and into Specials to help grow the business. While I think it’s stupid to have group 1 craft Digital Tech’s in Specials running around working non-designed broadband at small businesses and (gasp!!) residential locations on wholesale broadband, you can’t argue that it keeps techs steadily busy, increases growth revenue and prevents surplus. Take the good with the bad I suppose. It’ll probably all change again when Locus moves on to another business unit and someone else comes in to replace him.
It’s coming for sure. Project Emerald is what it’s referred to internally. Sadly, the combining of the titles almost will almost assuredly k–l off whatever core CPE business is left (Nortel PBX, Avaya Red CM/CC, Avaya IPO, BCM, Mitel/Shoretel) in the Southeast as 90% of the focus from leadership within Field Ops - Business is on Transport/Broadband GPON/Special Services. If it does become a reality, none of the existing Systems Tech’s will give a hoot about that business anymore as they transition into an environment that requires more physical labor and is under an electron microscope from a management/scorecard perspective at all times.
Yes, D4 called CPE techs appendix G......now folded in to the core contract with Business Services
@eda...you are correct on bumping...also SSIM & Sys tech can SIPP for each other and DEG. DEG can SIPP for SSIM & SYS tech but not bump.
Also, systems techs and SSIM digital techs can already bump each other since the 2015 contract. So this has been something the company has been working towards for a long time. DEG digital techs can not bump either though.
I’m a systems tech. We’re being told to get ready to climb poles so apparently it’s true. They already have us riding with digital techs (SSIM) to learn their job.
In District 6 there are systems techs that do CPE work. They were in their own management bubble last year, I don’t know about now.
D4 still has Special Servce techs that do BVoIP and HiCap installs. They have same title as far as surplus goes as I&R rpeair techs though.
OP is correct that in d3 the SSIM DT & systems techs appear to be merging(some 1st line managers have both titles as direct reports, 2nd level and up is all the same). Idk about the other districts.
The DEG tech in the SW has been a construction title, while the System Tech was an I&R Business tech title