They walked off the job in August and remain on strike as Labor Day nears

Gus May has worked as a service technician for AT&T for 45 years. He’s spent his entire career with the company, having a front-row seat to the evolution of technology over the past four decades, and believes it is a great one to work for.

But he and 17,000 other AT&T workers in Atlanta and across the Southeast are on strike, having walked off their jobs on Aug. 16 amid an impasse in contract negotiations.

May and several other AT&T employees have spent the past two weeks picketing outside of an AT&T service facility in Tucker, holding up signs that say, “Honk if you support workers,” and “Fighting for the middle class.” And as the federal holiday celebrating the American labor movement approaches on Monday, the picketers are pushing for better pay, benefits and hours.

“We love it because we’re standing for a cause,” said Reggie Tinch, a service technician who has spent 25 years with AT&T. “We’re standing up for fair labor practices, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Only about 5% of workers in Georgia belong to labor unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about half the national average. But organized labor has notched some recent organizing successes in the South and nationally since the pandemic and the election of a labor-friendly president in Joe Biden.

Going into the Labor Day weekend, the strike against AT&T in the Southeast began its third week Friday, one more example of organized labor’s continued tussle with management.

With so many workers walking picket lines instead of servicing business and consumer customers of the Dallas-based telecommunications giant, the stakes were high enough to draw Claude Cummings Jr., president of the 700,000-member CWA, to join several Atlanta-area picket lines on Friday, according to union officials.

About 2,500 of the striking AT&T workers are in metro Atlanta. But the strikers are all over a region that includes Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The workers had been on the job without a contract since a previous, five-year agreement expired Aug. 3. Company negotiators had been meeting with bargaining teams from the CWA, but the union had accused the company’s negotiators of not truly trying to reach an accord.

The CWA called the strike on Aug. 16, accusing the company of unfair labor practices, an allegation that AT&T has denied.

The company asked that future sessions include a federal mediator. Since then, negotiators have been meeting daily in Atlanta , according to the union.

Neither company nor union representatives had any comment Friday on the state of those talks, or whether there has been any progress toward an agreement.

Negotiating sessions through the three-day holiday are possible, said a CWA spokeswoman. “We will continue to make ourselves available to meet throughout the weekend.”

Whether the strike was having an impact on company business was hard to judge.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Union officials said they believed the absence of the workers had caused some problems with service to customers in the Southeast. AT&T, however, said it has taken action “to minimize any disruptions.”

“We are committed to reaching a fair deal for our employee members … with wages that outpace projected inflation and many other benefits that reflect today’s competitive job market,” an AT&T spokesman said.

May has gone without wages for two weeks. He said it hasn’t impacted him too severely, though he knows newer and younger workers don’t feel this same way. He and his colleagues want to see things resolve sooner rather than later.

“We just want to be treated fairly,” Tinch said.

Representatives from other unions have come out to show support, May said. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 613 brought lunch to each crew across the city last week.

Though the South has historically had a smaller portion of workers represented by unions, organizing campaigns have accelerated in recent years, with worker votes in local colleges and coffee shops, as well as manufacturing plants and airports.

Southern unions have seen both advances and defeats in recent months.

• Workers at Blue Bird in Fort Valley, who voted to join the United Steelworkers, negotiated a contract this spring.
• Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga — after rejecting union membership several times in the past decade — voted this year to join the United Auto Workers.
• Weeks after the VW vote, an effort to join the UAW was soundly defeated in a vote at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance, Alabama.
• Norfolk Southern recently reached labor deals with nine of the 13 unions that represent its workers, including four announced earlier this month and five announced Friday, covering about 55% of its workforce.

Union campaigns continue among flight attendants and ground workers at Delta Air Lines.

Flight attendants at Southwest Airlines overwhelmingly ratified a contract that includes pay raises totaling more than 33% over four years, a drive organized by the Transport Workers Union. Not long ago, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reached a new 5-year contract with Anheuser-Busch, boosting pay, benefits and job security for about 5,000 union-represented employees, many of them at plants in North Georgia.

Unions representing production crews, musicians and other craftspeople in Georgia’s film business also reached new deals with film and television executives that avoided a strike.

Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this report.

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