AT&T Announces Thousands of Layoffs, Firings Just In Time for Christmas

Across the Midwest, an estimated 600 workers were notified they were being laid off by the company on December 16, a week before the company announced it was doling out $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 of its employees in celebration of the Republican Party's tax overhaul.

The telecommunications giant told the Chicago Tribune in a statement that the layoffs were part of its “workforce adjustment" strategy for its declining legacy services.

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Technology improvements are driving higher efficiencies and there are some areas where demand for our legacy services continues to decline, and we’re adjusting our workforce in some of those areas as we continue to align our workforce with the changing needs of the business. Many of the affected employees have a job offer guarantee that ensures they’ll be offered another job with the company, and we’ll work to find other jobs for as many of them as possible.

The announcement comes days after the New York Post reported that the company "pink-slipped more than 700 DirecTV home installers." (AT&T owns DirecTV and is currently trying to acquire Time Warner, another cable provider, for a reported $85 billion.)

On Friday, the Post also reported that AT&T has recently laid off "215 high-skilled technician jobs in nine Southern states" and plans to fire nearly 700 workers in Texas and Missouri beginning in February.

Don't miss: AT&T Announces Thousands of Layoffs, Firings Just In Time for Christmas

Union representatives negotiating on behalf of the workers expressed concern and resentment towards the company.
"How can you lay people off and then give them $1,000 and say that there’s going to be more jobs available? I wish someone could tell me how that’s possible because I have to explain that to my members, and right now at this time of year, this is a difficult pill to swallow,” Joseph Blanco, president of Local 6360 Communication Workers of America Union in Kansas City, told Fox 4 on Thursday.

Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, said in a statement that the GOP's tax bill would improve the country's economy and the company's financial prospects.
“Congress, working closely with the President, took a monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world. This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs,” AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said, according to CNBC.

Last year, senior executives at AT&T told The New York Times that "shrinking the [company's] workforce by 30 percent is not out of the question."

The Justice Department sued AT&T in November in an attempt to block its acquisition of Time Warner. Soon after the company announced it would give $200 million worth of bonuses, President Donald Trump praised the move as an indicator of how the tax bill could benefit American workers.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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