The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission voted 5-0 to proceed with an inquiry into Frontier’s investment plans in Minnesota and its impact on service quality.
The four-year agreement, covering 1,000 workers in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, includes wage increases, limitations on movement of work, and work from home provisions.
AT&T refused to voluntarily recognize the union and used a series of tactics to delay the election, including an appeal to the full NLRB that resulted in the ballots being impounded.
"We love our jobs, we love working at Glitch, which is why we wanted to ensure we have a lasting voice at this company and lasting protections. This contract does that, and I hope tech workers across the industry can see that unions and start-ups are not incompatible," said Katie Lundsgaard, a software engineer at Glitch.
"Ensuring that all Americans have access to utility services during this pandemic is too important to be left to the discretion of individual utility companies," said CWA President Chris Shelton. "Essential workers have been on the job throughout the COVID-19 crisis making sure that households and businesses stay connected to energy, water, and communications services. We need a national moratorium on utility shutoffs so that service providers hold up their end of the bargain."
AT&T and Frontier fought for nearly two years to prevent the public release of the report finding that they allowed their copper networks to deteriorate over the last decade.
The Connect America Fund Phase II auction awarded $505.7 million to CenturyLink to deploy broadband to 1.17 million homes and $283.4 million to Frontier to deploy broadband to 659,587 homes by December 31, 2020.
In a letter to the FCC, the attorneys general detailed how Verizon's acquisition of TracFone could negatively impact the Lifeline program, which provides a subsidy for communications services to millions of low-income consumers.
