AT&T Plans to Fire 7,000 People Despite Tax Breaks, Net Neutrality Repeal

AT&T Plans to Fire 7,000 People Despite Taxation Breaks, Net Neutrality Repeal

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AT&T

When the GOP passed revenue enhancement reform in 2017, the party justified its corporate tax cuts with claims that the reductions would boost US employment, wages, and the overall economy. The FCC similarly justified its repeal of cyberspace neutrality by arguing that the onerous regulation of wireless and wireline service was hampering innovation, imposing ruinous costs, and by and large harming the telcos, ISPs, and cellular service providers in the United states of america.

Thus far, the corporations Ajit Pai and the Republican Party aptitude over backward to help haven't exactly been returning the favor. GM plans to close plants and fire 14,000 people. Verizon has no plan to boost 5G investment, despite Pai's claim that repealing cyberspace neutrality would lead to additional corporate network spending. Now AT&T is reportedly preparing to fire vii,000 people, despite having previously promised that tax breaks and freedom from crushing regulation would actually create jobs.

What AT&T Said So

On May iv, 2017, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson gave an interview to CNBC declaring the importance of cut taxes. "Lower taxes drives more investment, drives more hiring, drives greater wages," Stephenson said on CNBC's Squawk Box. "All of this fits together."

Other option quotes include: "If you can take a taxation reduction of 35 percent down to, you pick your number, 25 or xx per centum — to think that wouldn't cause additional investment is nonsensical. I know exactly what AT&T would practise: We would invest more."

Here'southward a really expert one:

"Every billion dollars in additional investment we brand is vii,000 boosted jobs we have to put on to put that uppercase into the ground or on cell towers and so along," Stephenson said. "And these are 7,000 jobs wearing hard hats, these are high-paying jobs with adept benefits. The correlation is very, very tight. If nosotros take to make that kind of hiring and do that kind of hiring, that drives productivity, which drives what? Wage growth." (Accent added).

AT&T reported a $19B tax windfall in January of 2018, along with an additional $3B in cash that it claimed it would spend on network investments throughout 2018. Capital expenditures in 2017 totaled $21.6B. At the starting time of 2018, AT&T forecast capital expenditures of $25B.

What AT&T Says Now

We don't know how much AT&T spent on majuscule expenditures for the unabridged year, merely in Q3 2018 the company stated its estimated capex for FY2018 would be ~$22B. That's on par with what it spent in 2017, with no increase associated with either the GOP tax neb or the $20B windfall.

In the memo (leaked to Motherboard and confirmed by AT&T), AT&T tries to dodge its ain previous statements, claiming that its CEO had previously said that $1B in investment creates seven,000 jobs "across the broader economic system." But that's not what Stephenson said.

In 2017, Stephenson claimed that the Trump taxation cuts would result in AT&T boosting its investment levels. He knew exactly what AT&T would do: Information technology would invest. That investment would create jobs, not "across the broader economic system," but for AT&T workers. Difficult hat jobs, with great benefits and proficient pay. The kind of jobs Americans want. The kind of jobs a CEO would dangle in front of Americans to make them think supporting a giant tax cutting and regulatory reduction for corporations was a good idea. The kind of jobs you talk near when you utilize a pronoun like "nosotros," which doesn't hateful "Other companies besides AT&T."

AT&T has earned record profits for itself by shuttering phone call centers and offshoring workers, with an estimated 16,500 jobs lost since 2011. The Communication Workers of America gauge AT&T eliminated ten,800 positions in the last yr lonely.

The bonuses AT&T claimed were paid out as a result of the Trump taxation cuts were actually negotiated beforehand with its unions and had absolutely goose egg to do with the GOP tax pecker. Despite the promise that internet neutrality repeal and the revenue enhancement cut would heave wireless investment, overall wireless capital expenditures are believed to have fallen in 2018. And this isn't unique to AT&T — Verizon also claimed plans to boost its own investment levels earlier deciding not to.

Instead of creating 7,000 jobs with every additional $1B in network investment, AT&T will shed 7,000 jobs to further enrich its stockholders and pay for stock buybacks.

Personal Note

Sometimes, in a story similar this one, someone will pop in and accuse me of political bias. While I won't pretend to lack political opinions, the point hither isn't political. Information technology's upstanding.

Put but, I'chiliad tired of existence lied to. The taxation cuts and cyberspace neutrality repeal were advertised, justified, and declared necessary because of the necessary and critical impact they would take on overall investment and infrastructure. None of it happened. No 1 is punished for it. The chairman of the FCC has produced no data at whatsoever point that actually justified his merits that net neutrality was a threat to broadband investment or had resulted in a reduction of it. (At least, none that stood upward to factual analysis).

We live in a country where powerful heads of major multi-national companies with resource and wealth that rival that of some countries are immune to blithely lie about their own intentions and the impact of laws that blatantly favor their ain cocky-interests. Our politicians, instead of serving as guardians of the public good, fall over themselves to enable this nihilistic behavior. And everyone — including, all likewise oft, members of the press — treats this every bit business every bit usual.

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