AT&T promised 7,000 new jobs to get tax break--it cut 23,000 jobs instead

[jayfish]

AT&T promised 7,000 new jobs to get tax break—it cut 23,000 jobs instead

AT&T has cut more than 23,000 jobs since receiving a big tax cut at the end of 2017, despite lobbying heavily for the tax cut by claiming that it would create thousands of jobs.

AT&T in November 2017 pushed for the corporate tax cut by promising to invest an additional $1 billion in 2018, with CEO Randall Stephenson saying that "every billion dollars AT&T invests is 7,000 hard-hat jobs. These are not entry-level jobs. These are 7,000 jobs of people putting fiber in ground, hard-hat jobs that make $70,000 to $80,000 per year."

The corporate tax cut was subsequently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. The tax cut reportedly gave AT&T an extra $3 billion in cash in 2018.

But AT&T cut capital spending and kept laying people off after the tax cut. A union analysis of AT&T's publicly available financial statements "shows the telecom company eliminated 23,328 jobs since the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, including nearly 6,000 in the first quarter of 2019," the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said yesterday.

[Iliyah]

1. Stores are closing and laying off workers . . .

Cost of living is rising and millions are losing their healthcare.

And yet the economy is booming? I think not.

[pbmus]

2. Booming for the 1%

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Yes,

afraid we will see this scenario pick up speed after June 1. As the price increases work there way through the supply chain,the cut backs will happen in direct proportion.

Something to watch for,the number of Lay offs at the Shipping Ports. The number of Lay offs at the Major Railroads as the Longshoreman are furloughed. The cascading effect is lurking. The major Rails are already extending the Length of their Trains do to cut backs in personnel. And that is just a recipe for a major disaster.

[HopeAgain]

3. AT&T Lied?

I'm shocked!

[Moostache]

4. I have a plan that would stop that nonsense...

Return to the original concept of the "corporation" - a trust GRANTED by the community to ALLOW a consolidated business group or interests to meet a COMMUNITY NEED and incorporate. Used to be to build bridges or irrigation or electrification projects....now it could be energy conversion from carbon to renewable, replacing aged bridges and infrastructure, filling a community need with actual living wage jobs, etc.

The point is corporations did not always exist with the sole purpose of increasing shareholder value above everything else. It used to be a balance between profits and people - making money AND making the community stronger as a result. Then it shifted to constant stock price gazing, continual obsession with the quarterly numbers and projections and things got ugly, which is the current trajectory in a nutshell.

Corporations CAN be a significant part of the solution to a regulated capitalism that does not rape and pillage every natural resource, externalize every waste disposal and clean-up cost, mooch off of the communal infrastructure without maintaining it, and in general ruin the lives of the very employees that make it work at all. Restoring a balance to the job of the CEO - away from bottom line profits above all and more towards an integrated leadership role, which balances the role of the employees, the customers, the shareholders and the community at large, would go a long way towards getting solutions that would be beneficial to far more than a select subset of wealthy investors and their CEO hatchet men.

Like anything else, the first step to making this situation better is to get people to recognize that the problem is the way the capitalist system is running and not the system itself. It can be fixed. It just requires an informed citizenry and active participation - which is almost entirely lacking...

[SWBTATTReg]

6. They lied before when they were trying to get a prior merger/acquisition approved and the ...

entity that they were testifying in front of (I think the FCC or something similar) told them in no uncertain terms to quit asserting false and/or fake points (e.g. would create X number of jobs etc.) when in fact, prior mergers / acquisitions that they had with other companies did exactly the opposite (they had claimed in taking over one of the other former regional bell operating companies that they would also create jobs, and of course, didn't).

This example should be flung into the faces of all of those who voted for this hare brained law (the 2017 tax cut and jobs bill) for (1) the name of the law is totally inappropriate in several ways, in that the law should have been called the '2017 Gift to 1%ers and Cut Jobs Act.'

These people are so full of it, I don't believe them in anything they say anymore. None of us should.

[Fullduplexxx]

7. And they just keep cutting ...every quarter many people lose their jobs

[appalachiablue]

8. Kick for visibility