January 25, 2011 - Last night at approximately 8:00pm, IBEW Local 21 leadership reached an agreement with AT&T that should minimize the negative impact on members from AT&T’s early January, 2011 Surplus announcement. Following are several major areas of the agreement. They include:

1) The two Network centers in Chicago slated to close in April, 2011 will still close, but not until 1/11/2012. These are the Network Provisioning Center at 311 W. Washington and the Network Reliability Center at 10 S. Canal.

2) There will be an additional SIPP incentive of $17,000 offered to all service pension eligible employees in affected surplus jobs titles in the Bill Smith Network Organization. This makes the total SIPP offer $47,500 for service pension eligible employees. Because of this change, the Company will completely re-canvas service pension eligible employees for the enhanced SIPP. The new off payroll date for those taking the enhanced SIPP will be 2/11/2011.

3) Surplus numbers in the following titles have been reduced.  Maintenance Administrators are reduced by 10, and Engineering Assistants reduced by 20.

4) 100 Network employees from Title Group 2 will move into the U-verse organization, with no economic protections, other than the Reassignment Pay Protection Plan (RIPP), found on pages 121-122 in Article 30 of the current CBA. To fill these positions, the Company will first solicit volunteers by order of seniority, and if there are not enough volunteers, movement will occur by inverse order of seniority.

5) 60 First Mile positions will be offered and be filled by employees in Title Group 2. The Company will first solicit volunteers by order of seniority, and if there are not enough volunteers, movement will occur by inverse order of seniority.

6) There is a guarantee of no surplus in Network C&E and I&M through 3/31/2012.

7) There will now be a negotiated process for future jobs into AT&T’s U-verse organization. Before the Company hires from the street, jobs will first be offered to employees in Title Group 2.

8) For any employees moving to U-verse under the conditions of this agreement, should the economy improve or any other condition arise that results in a future Title Group 2 job opening in the CORE agreement, employees that transferred to the U-Verse organization can retreat back to CORE.

9) U-verse jobs will now be included in any future recall lists.

10) There will be a give back of buried drops and locates. This was the key to getting AT&T to consider any of our Unions proposals.

Brothers and sisters, we know these past days have been hard, painfully hard. In that respect, we thank you all for your patience. These have been extremely difficult negotiations; however, this agreement is the end result of those talks. Additional information will be provided late this afternoon and over the next few days.

These are difficult times. Jobs are hard to come by, good jobs even harder.  Because of our union contract, we were able to bargain over the effects of AT&T’s early January painful surplus announcement.

IBEW Local 21 recognizes that the members of our union are among the finest workers in the entire communications industry, able to learn and adapt to new and emerging technologies. Despite continuing decades of poor corporate decisions, and greedy corporate planning to grow non-union, you continue our Union’s historic dedication of serving our customers, with diverse skills, courtesy and respect. Our objects and our goals do not change. We remain ever vigilant in working to better the personal growth of our members. Continue applying your skills to improve your position in today’s marketplace, within the confines of our collective bargaining agreement, and be assured that IBEW Local 21 will work towards all of our goals, keeping always, our members foremost in our minds.