The AT&T Corp. is cutting about 140 jobs at its Fairhaven, Mass., call center, about 40 percent of the staff, apparently as part of a shift in focus away from residential services and into business markets and emerging technologies.
The AT&T employees’ union announced the cuts, which it said would begin Nov. 19, with a formal notification next Tuesday. About 200 workers with more seniority will remain, union president Linda Teoli told the New Bedford Standard-Times.
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“This is a major blow to our members,” the Communications Workers of America Union Local 1051 said on its Web site. About 130 of the laid-off workers will be account representatives, and the other 10, clerical workers, the union said.
A Lehman Brothers analyst this week predicted up to 7,000 job cuts on AT&T’s consumer side by Oct. 31, a massive cut for a unit with about a 10,000-person staff. AT&T employs about 57,000 workers overall. So far, along with the Fairhaven layoffs, reported cuts include the closure of a call center in Charleston, W.Va., employing 275.
News of the cuts came just 10 days after AT&T notified the CWA that it would stop providing performance bonuses. But workers had been bracing themselves for worse news since in July, AT&T announced it would stop investing in residential service and focus instead on business services and technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol, playing to its strengths but also avoiding the impact of a March court ruling that would’ve obliged it to lease part of its networks to competitors at deep discounts.
The Fairhaven facility opened in 1997, bolstered by a job-creation tax break. In 2002, New Bedford officials revoked the break, saying AT&T had not kept its word to employ 1,200 people there.
