AT&T cutting 12,000 jobs due to "economic pressures"
By Tim Stevens 
posted December 4th 2008 10:06AM
posted December 4th 2008 10:06AM
[Via CellPhonesMarket.com; thanks, SK]
posted December 4th 2008 10:06AM
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disgusting company and other thing they try so desperately to kill internet using data caps, I guess it makes no difference to them to charge $100 to 100 MBytes download or $1000 for 10 MBytes - it is same profit to those greedy jerks !
I know. Trust me. They are Teh Evil. I have dealt with them in the past. But we need some1 to compete against Verizon. Although they might both conspire to price fix if sprint and tmobile fail.
So the head honchos can keep their huge bonuses... right? so sad.
Maybe their under-the-table income from their NSA spying contracts dried up.
AT&T is the devil!
I feel for them.
My dad was laid-off yesterday from his job as a journalist at a newspaper. They laid off 250 journalists :( .
It used to be one of the top newspapers in Scotland but this is the latest in line of lay-offs and now the paper is a load of crap cos they just get all their stories now off the internet and other newspapers.
I wonder whether part of the job cutting that's going on is the result of companies knowing they can say the reason is the state of the economy rather than just increasing profit margins. I'm not saying it's good or bad, and I know a lot of job cuts are genuinly the result of the recession...
But I just wonder if there are job cuts that companies would have wanted to have happen in a boom economy as well, which are now being pinned on the recession to avoid upsetting the workers, the stock holders, etc.
That is sad, especially to hear at the start of December ;(
I'm kind of surprised you guys didn't subtract 4% off the logo in this fashion...
http://www.summet.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/att-death-star.png
That's really a shame, though. I'm not sure what else to say. : /
Genius picture
Yes, it's all a conspiracy.
Yeah, I am one of those that MIGHT be affected...again!!.... guess I will see next year...
I'm with you JOE I might be affected as well.
12k people is a lot, no matter how you slice the logo.
I was part of the lightspeed (Uverse) buildout and I got let go in October. Although this position was term, it still kinda sucked because they said it would last for 3 yrs. But we could see the layoffs coming. Its kinda funny that the employees know more than the managers did. ;-)
i got cut on the 17th of November. 2 days later they told the rest of the people that were still around in my group they were outsourcing us. i was a network engineer that worked in their provisioning group setting up t3, ocx and voice circuits. we are all contractors, very few actual employees. they pay the contract companies 55hr for all of us. on average we all get between 30-50hr per person
they are sending our jobs to kentuky and south carolina where they are paying the new contractors 10-12 dollars an hour and also dont own or rent out the offices they work in
they should just ask the govt for some $
why not make the cutout piece look more like Apple? That is who they are a shill for anyways.
Sad... especially when you look at the graphic there- 4% is probably nothing to AT&T.
Assuming those 12K come from a pool of 300 million US citizens isn't that much either in the grand scale of things.
These people will find other jobs. The Earth will continue to rotate. Life goes on.
What bothers me is when people complain about lost jobs. If the employees didn't plan for downturns in the economy, it's their fault. You say you're living paycheck to paycheck? Did you ever look into wearing the same clothes for more than a season instead of wearing them while they are in fashion then giving them to a shelter? ...not buying that iPod? ...moving to a less expensive neighborhood? ...buying a used car instead of new?
Yeah, mabye you can get rid of one or two of those kids who require such pointless things like food, dental health, a roof over their heads, clothes, education... It all adds up.
Seriously, not everyone is rolling in excess dough, do you honestly think those people living paycheck-to-paycheck are going to spend their money on such trivialities as new cars or expensive clothes?
@CJ:
Yes. Those people that are living paycheck to paycheck buy things like new cars. That is why they are living paycheck to paycheck. Debt is a trap and will suck the life (and money) out of you. Sure it's only $300 a month here and $150 a month there, but it all adds up! Andir has a good point. No, not everyone is in the same boat or has what they need but a lot of American's priorities are wrong. When you have 2 new cars in the driveway, $2,000 of credit card debt and complaints about not being able to afford food -- something is wrong!
You are awful quick to stereotype "everybody" with that. There are honest to god people that ARE living Paycheck to Paycheck, not buying new cars or clothes, not taking government help, and just trying to get by. And you know know, those are probably some of the happiest people in the United States right now. I have a friend whose family lives like, and they all respect so much more out of life than anybody. The sad thing is, those are the kinds of people that are getting laid off,
@Squid:
I said: "No, not everyone is in the same boat or has what they need"
I agree, some Americans are not in the same boat, but a *majority* of Americans (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/20/business/20debt-trap.html) are that way. Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck due to debt. According the NY Times article/series most Americans save basically *nothing*. In 2007 the average American saved $449 dollars and had $121,650 in debt. That ratio just seems SO backwards to me! If you (in the general sense) are truly living paycheck to paycheck, you are probably in a better situation than most of these Americans because you aren't a SLAVE (http://www.daveramsey.com/the_truth_about/debt_3036.html.cfm) to your lender, which probably explains why you are so happy! :-D
"Yeah, mabye you can get rid of one or two of those kids who require such pointless things like food, dental health, a roof over their heads..."
Or you could have thought about that before having kids... Kids are not something everybody can afford or have. They aren't little automatically granted rights when you hit 18. That in itself is a problem they face because they assumed that kids should be haven by all and a magic fairy will somehow magically pay for. Learn to live with the fact that you can't afford having kids. In most cases, if you have one or two kids and you DON'T have money put back for when one stabs another with a pen in a fight, you shouldn't have those kids in the first place. That's a fact of life.
It's all about life planning and people are pretty damn bad at it.
Good lord, today's authors getting their asshole on this morning. Can we back the snark, sarcasm, and flat out prickishness off from 11 for a little bit? Go have your coffee or something.
Wait. AT&T employs 300,000 people? How? Why? The AT&T employee-to-customer ratio is probably better than the average public school teacher-to-student ratio.
Horrible customer service. Even worse DSL & phone coverage. How long did they think they were going to live off of iPhone profits. Their days are numbered imo.
Yes, because every car wash station in North America is raking in millions (or billions) of dollars every year.
That passé non-wireless sector has to support their burgeoning U-Verse service since it uses the same lines. And given the non-support I have received in the last week they can't afford to lose anybody......or would I even notice? The tech that came to my house Tuesday tried to tell me my HDMI cable was causing all my problems and switching to component would fix everything. He said there was no difference between an HDMI cable and Component. He was kinda stunned when I corrected him and then he snuck out to his truck to "open a trouble ticket to the line crew" and disappeared. And no, switching to Component did not fix it.
I'm a Uverse user as well, and to say that they use landlines is kind of wrong. They're using ATT's fiber infrastructure, fiber to the pole, and adding to it when you get Uverse, fiber to the house, then attaching that to the last 2 meters of 2wire going into your house.Yes, those fiber lines were used to pass voice for a long time, but they are overkill for that purpose, as Uverse illustrates. I've had them for a month now and am thrilled with the service. Install was a bit of a fiasco, they did have a fiber crew, and took 9 hours instead of 2, but the regional manager came out (and I hadn't even complained at this point) and apologized and assured me that they were not leaving until I had cable. Having dealt with Buckeye Express, Comcast, and Time Warner, I was left amazed at the level of customer service this "monster company" gave me in a space (cable TV installers) where the end user is prepared for and accepting of rude shoddy service.
Darius, you're off the mark a bit. Most Uverse customers do not have FTTP (Fiber to the Premises). This means that the fiber goes all the way up to the house. AT&T had issues with orders and installs with FTTP's for whatever reason.
Yes, AT&T has laid & used fiber for decades leading up to Uverse, but most Uverse customers are service by Fiber to the Node (the big green box in your neighborhood). From there, the signal gets transferred over traditional copper lines up to and into your house. Just like DSL speeds are faster the closer you are to the CO, the sorter lengths of copper are able to handle this bandwidth because of the extremely short distance.
I obviously don't know for certain, but I would guess that you probably ordered your Uverse at an AT&T Mobility store. The reason I say this is because of the level of service you received on the install. Uverse is a commissionable sale for the cell phone sales people and when they see things could go wrong, they call every contact they can get ahold of to correct it.
@Darius,
So, you are saying that the fiber is wireless? My comment stated U-Verse uses the same lines as the non-wireless services (AKA Voice) which covers Fiber as well as copper. I have Fiber up to my CO down the street and copper to my house (~150 ft.) and the VRAD at the CO requires a little more attention than the previous generation system. I see techs there at least twice a week. They did not as you suggested run FTTH when I signed up for U-verse (about a month ago myself). I wish they would have. Perhaps I wouldn't be having some of the issues I am seeing now. They did send a line crew out Wednesday for some errors on the line but my DVR has been down for over a week and I have had them tell me I had a tech scheduled at least six times and have had an actual tech show up only once. Other than my DVR going belly up after only a month and tech support only slightly less of a nightmare than comcast was I love the service. Bottom line I think ATT has a solid service but their technical support is a huge bag of hurt. I've heard "I'm sorry for your inconvenience" in every conceivable accent in the last 8 days.
Adobe's laid off 600 people too, and aren't having a MacWorld booth.
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/03/adobe-trimming-expo-budget-possibly-jobs/
I wrote on that story that this is how depressions work.
Spending goes down as a result of some external factor (this time, the subprime mortage crisis).
Jobs are cut as companies can't keep up.
Spending goes down even more.
More jobs are cut.
Ad nauseum.
So, it's hard to really say anything about this thing. The Government can't just bail out every company. The depression's started, and we can only do what we can to stop it now...
Thank you for stating this. I know it as well but watch you get low ranked by people who want to live in la la land as they have done to me. Ignorance is truly bliss. But we are in a recession right now and we have been for over a year. Just the government denied it until the stock market reflected it. Then it was just too big too ignore and too late to respond.
This is further proof that landlines are dead. Especially with a poor economy in the usa, thats the first thing people shut off to save money. With cell phones and voip, you would almost be a fool to have a land line.
Yeah, especially during an ice storm or power outage when cell phones and VOIP doesn't work. I live in the Midwest and know from experience. There is still a place for landlines and the reliability is second to none. It is still smart to have a stripped down landline and an old corded phone around for emergencies. It only runs around 25-30 bucks a month or cheaper if you get a measured rate plan. The landline isn't quite dead yet.
When i'm home My cell phone becomes my home phone and I don't carry it around every where. Also never had to cut a conversation short because my phone battery was about to die on a land line. I would like a land line to put down so every company including the telemarketers and prank callers have something to call other than my hip. I guess i'd call it a extra step in screening my calls.
My problem with the land line is that $25 -$30 was as cheap as i could get it. and that 30 bucks is roughly half my cell bill. For me , that's just too much. A stripped down land line would be a solution even with a "reasonable" voice plan. Isn't that the way they use to do it. " 50 cents a minute for long distance." i got my first cell phone cause it was free long distance.
The Voip stuff makes going to the cell shop after a storm interesting.
I love how everyone makes a big piss about all these companies cutting jobs, when our economy is already in turmoil. Are you that blind to whats going on around all of you? XD makes me laugh.
How about the Board takes a pay cut, equal to 12k employees, and that way the employees don't lose their jobs, or do the CEO's have to live in ($12 million+) houses. Really, all company boards should be the ones getting paycuts, transfer profit margin to employees, that's smarter than losing employees then get understaffed. and then losing customers to poor service.
I'm glad they're being proactive and not reactive. I hate that people are losing their jobs, but I'm glad the management doesn't close a blind eye to the environment it's working in. Other huge corporations are run by idiots who not only fail to innovate, they also fail to adjust to conditions and continue to pay people very large wages to produce products fewer people are willing to buy. Now instead of laying off a xx,000 employees, GM, Ford and Chrysler are looking at laying off all of them if they go out of business. I don't see Ma Bell going out of business any time soon... and at least AT&T won't be coming to Congress looking for a bailout... Remarkable, an American company that isn't prepping for bankruptcy.
It's not a big one, but at least there's a glimmer of silver lining to this otherwise dark cloud.
I don't know what you're talking about, that's just reactive role they're taking, proactive is when the company shifts profit to cash, instead of putting it in the chair's mouth. Bullshit this is seen as proactive,m when this is clearly selfish, any company making cuts is stupid, they should reduce pay on the higher-ups.
I'm glad they're being proactive and not reactive. I hate that people are losing their jobs, but I'm glad the management doesn't close a blind eye to the environment it's working in. Other huge corporations are run by idiots who not only fail to innovate, they also fail to adjust to conditions and continue to pay people very large wages to produce products fewer people are willing to buy. Now instead of laying off a xx,000 employees, GM, Ford and Chrysler are looking at laying off all of them if they go out of business. I don't see Ma Bell going out of business any time soon... and at least AT&T won't be coming to Congress looking for a bailout... Remarkable, an American company that isn't prepping for bankruptcy.
It's not a big one, but at least there's a glimmer of silver lining to this otherwise dark cloud.
I live in North America and I don't really get rock99rock's point.
I'm going to be a true American and blame all my dropped calls last night on this.
HAHA!
AT&T
this is what you get for selling a crap phone like iphone and working with an evil company like Apple
AT&T doesn't need to cut 12,000 jobs, all their execs have to do is take a pay cut. Of course, they would never think of doing such a thing!!
These lost jobs are caused by fat cats who want to maintain their hefty paychecks without shaving anything off.
I feel bad for whoever loses their jobs, but AT&T as a company just sucks. They treat their employees like crap. I quit a year ago, thank god. AT&T deserves whatever bad things befall them. They're all about driving off the well-paid, smart engineers and replacing them with little sycophants who cost less, know very little, do whatever they're told, and provide no innovation whatsoever. New product development is a JOKE. Mediocrity and worse is the standard at AT&T.