AT&T West Employees Stage Walkouts After Contract Expiration

Over the past two months, there have been a string of large-scale strikes by AT&T West employees in response to company management decisions. Last month, 4,000 Communication Workers Association (CWA) members rallied against the company’s decision to move maintenance of its 911 equipment to a lower-paid group, LaborNotes.org reports.
On April 10, the contracts of 15,000 AT&T West employees in Nevada and California, expired. This gave employees the power to strike, as they were no longer bound by the mandatory arbitration clauses in their previous contracts.
Prior to the CWA strike, Local 9509 in San Diego staged a six-day strike in California, the state’s largest in the past 25 years. At five garages in Los Angeles, workers left for a four-day grievance in response to an employee’s 15-day suspension.
This string of labor disputes comes just after 40,000 Verizon employees staged a six-and-a-half week strike, which ended in late May. The CWA also organized this strike.