Briefing: How corporate giants are failing to provide broadband and good jobs

At a briefing moderated by Alan Barber of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, panelists from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, Economic Policy Institute, and CWA, talked about how profit-driven corporations have left communities without access to next-generation fiber networks and eliminated good jobs, with a spotlight on AT&T.

“With the pandemic, the simmering crisis of digital redlining has become a five-alarm emergency,” said Stan Santos, a splicing technician for AT&T and a member of CWA Local 9408 in the Central Valley of California. “There is a huge swath of communities along the westside of Fresno County that lack basic infrastructure for broadband. As the incumbent local exchange carrier, my employer, AT&T, is directly responsible for this failure to connect our communities to broadband. The majority of these communities are ignored, the landlines left to die, as AT&T seeks to slough off these markets and cut the jobs of CWA members who carry out the deployment work and maintenance.” 

"For four decades, wage growth in telecommunications has not come close to matching the skills upgrading that has taken place in the workforce,” said John Schmitt, Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute. “The two most important ways to reconnect wage growth to skills would be to place restrictions on the widespread use of subcontracting and to restore workers' rights to organize."

You can watch the recorded briefing here. 

Links:

Webinar: How corporate giants are failing to provide broadband and good jobs (CWA, Oct. 5, 2020)