Letter: AT&T is cutting thousands of jobs, plain and simple
We appreciate that AT&T is hiring for a few jobs in Lafayette, but unfortunately, their latest hiring announcement is a media stunt to obscure the big picture: AT&T’s interests lie in getting rich quick, even if that means slashing jobs in the process.
More than 37,000 jobs have been cut since AT&T got its big tax break under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, and massive numbers of call center jobs have been offshored to low-wage countries where companies like AT&T can easily exploit workers, such as the Philippines, where 1.3 million workers now largely serve the U.S. market.
In August, a delegation of CWA members who traveled to Manila found that Filipino AT&T call center workers were getting paid less than $2.00 per hour and were denied basic rights. This trend of overwhelming amounts of offshoring and jobs cuts in the U.S. are all thanks to AT&T using the huge amounts in profits it has reaped from its tax break — over $21 billion so far — to buy back its own stock rather than invest in its workforce and create more jobs.
That means top executives and shareholders continue to get richer by paying themselves with stock, leaving the employees whose backs they’ve built a fortune off of in the dust. We need to hold AT&T accountable for the promises they made on job creation.