Maui AT&T workers join strike

The Maui News and The Associated Press

A national labor dispute between AT&T and its unionized workers spilled over onto Maui with nine retail sales workers at the Queen Ka'ahumanu Center store joining the three-day strike that began Friday.

The workers picketed outside the Kaahumanu Avenue entrance of the shopping center while the store remained open, operated by managers and vendors, according to AT&T officials. The Queen Ka'ahumanu Center store currently is the only AT&T store on Maui.

The Communications Workers of America, which represents the union, says that up to 40,000 AT&T workers nationwide started walking off the job over contract fights with the phone company Friday. They'll return to work Monday. This includes 21,000 workers on the wireless side of the company, which the union says raises the prospect that some cellphone stores could be closed this weekend in Washington, D.C., or one of the 36 states affected. Some 17,000 other potential strikers come from AT&T's home phone, internet and cable division in California, Nevada and Connecticut. Another 2,000 are DirecTV workers in California and Nevada.

Maui strike captain Barbara Simmons said Friday that the strike is over wages, job security, health care and scheduling policies.

"AT&T continues to move more than 60 percent of wireless retail jobs, like mine, to low-quality, third-party dealers that rip off their employees," she said. "Its executives have chosen to undercut workers and customers.

"I know the three-day strike might inconvenience some of our customers, but we are committed to putting an end to unnecessary frustration and poor service too many people are facing."

AT&T spokesman Leland Kim countered that "we're offering generous terms in these negotiations, including annual wage and pension increases, as well as comprehensive health care benefits, similar to what other employees across the country have ratified in other contracts."

"We're confident employees will be better off financially in their new contracts," Kim continued.

Kim noted that AT&T is the only major wireless company with a unionized workforce and is "proud to be a union-friendly employer."

"We've reached 29 fair agreements since 2015 covering over 128,000 of our employees, and we're confident we can do the same here," she said.

AT&T has been preparing contingencies for the strike and, besides using managers and vendors, the company can route customers' calls to call centers, Kim said.