CWA-AT&T Mobility Bargaining Report #9, Thursday, January 31, 2013

Bargaining resumed today with a heated discussion when the Company rejected the Union’s proposal on the new Letter of Agreement-Electronic Monitoring. The Company has no interest in providing any type of relief to the constant monitoring. The Company believes their monitoring process meets their needs with respect to providing high level service to customers. They made it clear they have no interest in addressing the incredible amount of stress their electronic monitoring places on their employees. They actually believe employees would perform worse if they were not being monitored. They believe the superior customer service being provided by each of you is only because of their micro managing. Needless to say, the Union’s proposal on Electronic Monitoring was passed right back to the Company in its original form which would provide for monitoring to be used in the form of coaching and without discipline. 

The Company also rejected the Union’s proposal on Article 21-Absence. Part of the Union’s proposal is intended to improve the funeral leave language by adding additional relationships that would be covered and paid time off to vote. The Company believes you have enough time to vote outside your scheduled shifts and the funeral language is already very generous. 

The Union made two (2) new proposals today. The first was a new Letter of Agreement-Employee Resource Coordinator and the second a new Letter of Agreement-Health Care Coordinator. Both proposal would provide for additional resources to assist members with  medical and other health benefits in addition to other issues such as leaves of absence, FMLA, EAP, Tuition Assistance and Pensions/401K to name a few. A small modification and we mean small on Article 23-Holidays was also passed.

Bargaining resumes Friday, February 1, 2013.