SUNRISE, Fla. – It’s been a week now that AT&T union workers have been out on the streets on strike.
Local 10′s Hannah Yechivi was in Sunrise Friday morning, where workers from Fort Lauderdale were picketing, and they could also be seen in Miami and West Palm Beach.
About 10,000 AT&T workers are currently on strike just here in Florida.
“Our contract expired on August third with AT&T -- our working agreement -- and the company has come to the table with representatives that cannot make decisions and they’ve engaged in what they call surface bargaining, which is basically just going through the motions -- nothing serious -- and they don’t make decisions at the table,” said Mike Devane, president of Local 3104 CWA in Fort Lauderdale.
So one group of union workers were stationed right in front of their AT&T office Friday morning, demanding a fair agreement with the telecommunications giant.
“Across nine states, 17,000 workers are out, and at the end of the day, we just want our fair share and negotiate a fair contract,” AT&T employee Alfonso Holloway said.
The workers are all members of the Communications Workers of America Union (CWA).
On Friday and for the past seven days, they’ve been hitting the picket line -- something AT&T workers have not done for the last six years.
They say they are just looking for a fair contract and that this is an unfair labor practice strike.
“And we meet in the middle, and we find common ground and we move forward in negotiations,” Holloway said. “Negotiations are stalled. The company isn’t necessarily budging or willing to negotiate fairly with the people from the bargaining team from the union.”
The union president says this is day 7 and they don’t plan to slow down.
“We took the trucks back to the yards, everybody got off their desks, and they walked out,” Devane said.
“Everybody who is out on the line and in front of a work center, they have been unpaid for six days,” Holloway said.
AT&T released the following statement on the strike:
“CWA’s claims of unfair labor practices are not grounded in fact. We have been engaged in substantive bargaining since day 1 and are eager to reach an agreement that benefits our hard-working employees. As evidence, we have reached 3 agreements this year covering more than 13,000 employees, including our most recent tentative agreement with District 9 (west). We remain committed to working with District 3 (southeast) in the same manner,” the statement read. “We’re disappointed that union leaders would call for a strike at this point in the negotiations, rather than directing their energies toward constructive discussions at the bargaining table. This action needlessly jeopardizes the wages and well-being of our employees.
“We have various business continuity measures in place to avoid disruptions to operations and will continue to provide our customers with the great service they expect.”