Several AT&T employees who walked off the job in a contract dispute were picketing this weekend in front of the utility company’s facility in downtown Hopkinsville.
(Photo by Jennifer P. Brown)
The strikers are members of Communication Workers of America Local 3312. They are among an estimated 20,000 employees in the Southeast who went on strike at midnight Friday.
“We are on strike for unfair labor practices,” local CWA president Norman Franklin said Saturday in front of AT&T’s building on South Main Street.
The employees are technicians and customer service representatives in the union’s District 3 region who do installation and maintenance for AT&T’s telephone landline, internet and cable TV services. The district includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
AT&T and the union are at odds over a contract that expired three weeks.
Franklin said the company sent representatives to a meeting in Atlanta who did not have the authority to negotiate a contract. Therefore, the union says, AT&T is not negotiating in good faith.
AT&T spokesman Jim Kimberly said the company is prepared to continue business during the strike.
“A strike is in no one’s best interest. We remain ready to sit down with union leaders to negotiate a new, improved contract for our employees. Our bargaining team is negotiating this contract with CWA leaders in the same way we have successfully done with other CWA contracts over the years,” Kimberly said. “That’s why we’re surprised and disappointed that union leaders would call for a strike at this point in the negotiations, particularly when we’re offering terms that would help our employees – some of whom average from $121,000 to $134,000 in total compensation – be even better off.”
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
