After a monthlong strike , about 17,000 union-represented AT&T employees in Florida and other states across the U.S. South are back on the job Monday, after their union managed to reach a tentative deal with the telecommunications giant over the weekend. The deal concludes the longest telecommunications industry strike in the region’s history, beating out a 22-day strike by 675,000 AT&T telephone workers across the U.S. in 1983.
The five-year agreement reached Sunday, still subject to union members’ final approval, includes an average across-the-board wage increase of about 19 percent for the covered workforce, according to the Communications Workers of America labor union, with an initial 5 percent increase effective the Sunday after ratification, if approved. The agreement would also deliver an additional 3 percent raises for lower-paid machine operators and wire technicians, whom company leadership has in the past allegedly described as “second class” employees.
The agreement would cover about 4,250 employees who work across Florida, if approved, including customer service representatives and other frontline blue-collar workers who help install and maintain the multibillion-dollar telecom company’s residential and business wireless telecommunications network.