It’s been just about a month since more than 17,000 AT&T employees across the Southeast, including roughly 4,250 internet service technicians, customer service reps and installation techs in Florida,
.
They’ve been on strike over a breakdown in contract talks between their union, the Communications Workers of America, and the telecom giant they work for day in and day out to keep communities connected — when times are good, and when they’re dire.
“Without us, there’s no 911 communications,” said Troy Tavares, a 21-year outside plant technician from Longwood, speaking from a picket line off Goldenrod Road in Orlando on Friday. “Half of this city of Orlando will not have internet if we don’t come out at 2 o’clock in the morning when there’s been an accident [and] a telephone pole went down.”
The executive suite of AT&T — a company that posted
$24.7 billion in operating income
last year — “may have come up with the ideas,” Tavares acknowledged. “But we have to implement them.” He and his co-workers are the middle class, he said, and they’re the ones who answer the communities’ calls.