AT+T workers in Central Florida strike over company’s ‘bad faith’ bargaining in contract talks

Thousands of AT&T employees in the Southeast region of the United States — across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — have been on strike since Friday afternoon over allegations from the union of bad faith bargaining. It's been five years since they last struck, back in 2019.

AT&T employees, represented by the Communications Workers of America, have been in talks with the company over a new contract since June. The union and its various locals in Florida represent approximately 4,250 working people in Florida, including customer service reps, technicians and workers who install and maintain the company’s wireless telecommunications network, according to a union spokesperson.

One of the local unions in Central Florida — CWA 3108 — has organized several picket lines for AT&T employees in the region who are currently fighting for a new, fair contract to address rising healthcare costs, increasing pay and cost-of-living adjustments, and work-life balance.

According to Steve Wisniewski, president of CWA Local 3108, the company has failed to bring a company representative to the bargaining table, instead sending in labor relations managers who have to reach out to actual company representatives to OK anything discussed during bargaining, thereby unnecessarily delaying the process of actually reaching agreements on contract items.

“It doesn't do any good to talk to somebody who can't make a decision,” Wisniewski told Orlando Weekly on the picket line Monday, adding that the company has also engaged in surface bargaining, where the company appears to be going through the motions, rather than taking the union's proposals seriously.

“We want to work with them,” said Keith Harmon, a 45-year-old facility technician and 24-year employees of AT&T from Saint Cloud. “Just to, you know, blow us off, it's unreal,” he shared, standing with a group of about a dozen other AT&T employees off South Orange Avenue in 95-degree heat. “I've never seen nothing quite like it.”

Harmon said they're not on the picket line to fight over wages, or even affordable healthcare benefits — a major issue in contract talks with the higher cost of living in Florida. They just want the company to take bargaining seriously and negotiate with them in good faith.

“We need anything, any freaking movement,” said Keith, a longtime union member and a steward (union leader) for Local 3108. Car horns honk in solidarity with the picketing workers, who hold signs with phrases like “Honk for the Middle Class” and “Honk If You Support Workers.” One group of workers, sitting under a tent, insisted on a photo in front of the American flag.

Over the weekend, Orlando's neighbors, friends and family members who work for the telecommunications giant — as well as their families and community allies — joined picket lines in Orlando and Lake Mary, as well as up in Volusia County (where they were joined by union leaders with the teachers’ union ) and on Florida’s Space Coast in Cocoa and Melbourne. It's their fourth day on strike and they're ready to get back on the job whenever the company is ready to send someone from their headquarters in Dallas to negotiate.

“Corporate is going to have to do something, and we'll get our asses back to work,” said Harmon, “which is where we want to be.”


According to the international union, there are 13 CWA locals in Florida that represent workers at AT&T Southeast. Some locals are smaller, but picket lines have also popped up in South Florida and other states like Georgia, Texas and Alabama.

U.S. Congressman Darren Soto showed  up to the picket line early Monday afternoon, according to Wisniewski, as have other local elected officials (or proxies) since they went on strike, such as Florida Senate candidate Carmen Torres, Florida House Rep. Tom Keen and Orange County commissioner Mayra Uribe. Other unions and Central Florida Jobs With Justice (whose staff are also represented by CWA Local 3108) are also expected to show up this week if the strike stretches on.

For his part, Harmon hopes it doesn't. Wisniewski also hopes the strike comes to a conclusion soon.

Things are starting to get unsafe, according to the union. In a fourth-day update, the CWA international union warned of dangerous practices they’ve seen among third-party strike-breakers (dubbed by critics “scabs”) who have been hired in an effort to fill the current labor shortage resulting from the strike.

“AT&T has been sending undertrained managers and contractors to perform highly technical work,” Richard Honeycutt, Vice President of CWA District 3 in the Southeast, claimed in a statement early Monday. “Our members have seen them at work in their communities and documented unsafe practices, including failure to wear proper safety equipment, failure to secure ladders and other equipment putting the worker and nearby vehicles and pedestrians at risk, and failure to mark work areas with safety cones. We are encouraging members of the public to use extra caution when encountering these worksites.”

Harmon, with Local 3108, said he hasn't seen any strike-breakers around locally yet, but has heard about them being hired through Facebook and job ads and the like in other areas, through internal communications with union members elsewhere.

He confirmed that hiring people who aren't properly trained can be dangerous. Full-time workers like himself, for instance, are required to do regular computer-based trainings on safety issues to prevent suffering severe injury or death on the job, whether that's due to power-line work or driving massive bucket trucks that can topple over during extreme weather conditions.

“A guy in Fort Lauderdale died a couple years ago when the whole bucket swung over with a gust of wind,” said Harmon. “So, yeah, there's — it's dangerous out there.”
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Contract talks first kicked off in June, where negotiators laid out their initial proposals for the company and pointed out a lag in AT&T CEO John Stankey’s pay, compared to other industry heads. The rank-and-file workers padding his pockets are feeling “the same way.”

“The company shared a market analysis of several other telecom providers and tech companies and concluded that Stankey's total target compensation of $21.5 million that he agreed to in 2020 ‘was falling behind that of market peers,’” Richard Honeycutt, Vice President of CWA District 3 in the Southeast, shared in opening remarks in late June.

“We feel the same way,” Honeycutt continued.

“Our members’ pay has fallen behind, and we expect this to be boosted during this round of bargaining. As we have seen, CEOs come and go; it is our members who have been loyal to this company and are the ones who deserve to be properly compensated.”

According to a tracker from the AFL-CIO, Stankey reported about $26.5 million in total compensation in 2023, which is about 193 times the pay of the company’s median employee. Most of his money came from stock awards of over $16 million, according to the labor federation, on top of a $2.4 million salary and millions of dollars in incentive pay, plus other forms of compensation.

The company, for its part, blasted the union in response to a request for comment from Orlando Weekly , telling us through a spokesperson that they were disappointed in the union's decision to 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,” claimed the spokesperson.

They added that they've reached three agreements this year covering more than 13,000 employees, including a recent tentative agreement reached with AT&T West employees. The spokesperson said they “remain committed” to working with CWA District 3 (covering the Southeast region) in the same manner.

Harmon, who's unimpressed with the company's excuses, said community members who wish to support them could bring water or Gatorade to their picket lines (you can follow their social media here for updates ).

If the strike stretches on for more than a few days, however, he admitted they may require more support, too. “As far as putting food on the table, that could happen in the near future,” he said, candidly. “I think we're doing OK for the moment.”

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