AT&T East, CWA reach tentative agreement covering wireline workers in Connecticut

AT&T (NYSE: T) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) District 1 have established a tentative four-year union agreement covering about 3,000 wireline employees in Connecticut.

The agreement will be submitted to the CWA's membership for a ratification vote in the next few days. If the CWA and its employees are able to ratify the agreement on or before June 3, a bonus of $350 will be paid to each eligible employee.

Replacing a contract that expired April 7, 2012, the new agreement will run through April 9, 2016. This new agreement includes a compounded wage increase of over 10.8 percent and an expansion to additional employees of a provision that provides qualified surplus employees a guaranteed job opportunity with AT&T.

AT&T said that CWA District 1 is the last bargaining unit to reach an agreement among seven for which contracts expired in 2012 and early 2013. Since last August, AT&T has ratified agreements in four other territories--West, Midwest, Southeast, and the Southwest--which collectively cover 77,000 CWA union-represented AT&T wireline employees.

Separately, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council T-3 ratified a four-year contract covering almost 6,500 wireline employees in Illinois, northwestern Indiana and other local union branches throughout the United States.

For more:
- see the release

Special report: The battle for union contracts: AT&T, Hawaiian Telcom, others hash out wireline benefits

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