Monday, March 26, 2012
News Occupy Atlanta claims victory; AT&T says bull#!@&
Posted by Joeff Davis @joeffly on Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 5:57 PM
- Joeff Davis
- Occupy Atlanta and Atlanta Jobs with Justice claimed victory at a Monday press conference outside the AT&T building on West Peachtree Street
According to an Occupy Atlanta press release issued late Sunday night, AT&T reduced its announced layoffs by 255 from the original planned 740 and that the "the March 25 layoff numbers were lower than any period in recent history." Occupy Atlanta said the company was influenced by the group's protest, which started in mid-February when 12 protesters marched into the AT&T building and refused to leave until the job cuts were rescinded. Police arrested and charged the protesters with criminal trespass. (They head to court in May.) Shortly after the arrests, dozens of tents and signs blasting the company started popping up outside the AT&T building. After Occupy Atlanta's victory announcement today, protesters started to break down their tents.
An AT&T spokesman, however, told CL via email that Occupy Atlanta's protests played no role in the company's layoff plans.
"Occupy and Atlanta Jobs with Justice had absolutely no effect on how we handled the surplus," the spokesman wrote. "We notified the union on Dec. 21 - long before these groups got involved in mid-February - that we had reduced our initial Dec. 15 surplus of 740 by nearly 200 because we were able to move employees to other work."
Eddy Jimenez, a former AT&T service technician who was recently laid off, contests the company's claim. He said this morning that he saw a list of potential layoffs in December that contained 500 names and that the same list was reduced to 200 when he saw it in mid-February - after Occupy Atlanta started their protest and set up their encampment.
Occupy Atlanta's Tim Franzen also said this morning that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who made $27,341,628.000 in 2010, received a pay cut of two million dollars shortly after the "occupation" began. However, that pay cut, which was announced in a regulatory filing shortly after the protest started, was attributed by the telecom giant to AT&T's failed effort to buy T-Mobile.
"I think it's wrong for families to lose their jobs and be put in the position to lose everything they own," Johnny Money Julliano, one of the few OA supporters who spent all 42 days camping along West Peachtree Street, said as he packed up his tent. "It needs to stop. There are too many greedy people in this country. The CEOs think of their families but they don't think of their workers' families."
Next up for the movement, according to Roger Sikes of Jobs with Justice, is a "massive escalation," at the Gold Dome to stop Senate Bill 469 - "the protest bill that undercuts the unions." He added that groups have been collecting a bail fund for the last three weeks and will be engaging in protests at the Capitol.
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