Essay: The 2017 Strike of AT&T workers

Dec 11th, 2017

The 2017 Strike of AT&T workers

Introduction

            Job outsourcing helps companies expand and gain access to new market areas, by taking the point of production or service delivery further from the end users. Lower operational and labor costs are also among the primary reasons why companies choose to outsource. When properly executed it has a defining impact on a company's revenue and can deliver significant savings. In this paper, I examine the negative wage impact of offshoring using Karl Marx and Immanuel Wallerstein theories about capitalism and globalization. My argument is that the increase in job loss fears and increase in offshoring to low-wage countries share a correlation.

Theory

Karl Marx's critique of capitalism analyzes the capitalist mode of production, which refers to the systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies. Mode production is a specific historically occurring set of relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization and knowledge. Marx defined mode of production as the way a society is organized to produce goods and services. It consists of two major features: the forces of production and the social relations of production. The forces of production consist of the means of production (labor, technology, factories) and the labour power.

Social relations of production is another way of referring to the class structure. The social relations of production refers to the social relationships between the ones who own the means of production, in this case that would be the bourgeoisie and those who own nothing, the proletariat.  In an attempt to evolve to the pressures of capitalism AT&T lowers its wages and increases its benefits in order for the system to maintain rather than revolutionize into socialism.

 Contradictions in the mode of production (chiefly, class struggle) eventually lead to a revolution towards the following mode of production and superstructure: Feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism (Filomeno 2017). The capitalist mode of production; bourgeois vs. proletariat or AT&T vs AT&T employees both locally and internationally (wage labor). The global class solidarity, AT&T workers in United States unite with AT&T workers located internationally.

The capitalist world economy, as envisioned by Wallerstein, is a dynamic system which changes over time. It is a collection of many institutions that are intertwined within each other. The capitalist world system is a social system where the primary goal is endless capital. The objective for the institutions and markets within this world system is to accumulate capital in order to accumulate still more capital, a continual and endless process.

 Wallerstein divides the capitalist world-economy into three areas: Core states concentrate on higher-skill, capital-intensive production; they are militarily strong; they appropriate much of the surplus of the whole world-economy (Wallerstein, 1974, P.401). Peripheral areas focus on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials; they have weak states. Semi peripheral areas are less dependent on the core than peripheral ones; they have more diversified economies and stronger states. After years of accumulation of capital, usually twenty-five years, the level of profit decreases both because of the undermining of the quasi-monopoly of the leading industry and because of the rise in labor costs due to launch of syndical actions of some sort. When cost in labor increases runaway companies move the site of production and labor to some other part of the world-system that has lower wage requirements. AT&T outsourcing jobs from the United States to the Dominican Republic is equivalent to this concept of a runaway factory.

Critical Analysis

There was a class struggle between AT&T workers and their employer because, since the year 2011, AT&T has cut about 12,000 call-center jobs in the United States then outsourced these same jobs to semi peripheral states where they could pay lower wages in order to accumulate endless capital.“AT&T’s pervasive offshoring of jobs to low-wage contractors, did not only eliminate good jobs but it also hurt customer service." Out of frustration and fear more than 35,000 AT&T workers in the United States in areas such as: Washington D.C, Illinois and California went on a weekend-long strike demanding that AT&T commit to affordable benefits, fair wages, job security and employment contracts because most of the AT&T workers in the United States had been working without contracts for over one year. The same jobs that AT&T cut here in the United States were then transferred to some other part of the world-system in rural areas that were not involved or were less involved in the market economy. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe”(Marx,Engels,1887). This move in labor would guarantee that production cost remains low and profits stay high. Workers in cheaper countries such as like Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador, and the Philippines were open to these jobs despite being paid as little as $1.60 per hour, and majority of them working without a contract because being unemployed was worse than having s bar job. For the international workers the opportunity to work for AT&T represented an increase in capital.

Offshoring was a change in relations of production in order to accumulate more profit. It not only guaranteed an increase in capital after production and consumption, but it also represented cheap labor, and no strikes. Despite protesting the offshoring of jobs AT&T workers in the Communications Workers of America union traveled to the Dominican Republic to meet with some of the outsourced workers who now handled AT&T customer service calls, their visit built some sort of solidarity between the local and international workers. Workers of the world uniting in solidarity shows that they shared a single vision: that their employer AT&T was the oppressor. This common vested interest shared by all AT&T workers locally and internationally gave them credibility and the power to bring about social change. AT&T workers needed to see themselves as one unit, who together, could revolt and change their working conditions.

Marx believed that strikes unified the working class, that they were a manifestation of class struggle and directly undermined elite members of society. Understanding Marx’s view on strikes helps show how important strikes were, not only in bringing about economic change, but in defining the class struggles that, at times, characterized industrial British society (Marx 126-130).

According to the Union this was the first time AT&T workers had gone on a strike, so in order to maintain their image by looking responsible, AT&T had a PR strategy set in stone releasing statements such as: "We are thoroughly prepared for a work stoppage, and we're committed to delivering the best service we possibly can," AT&T said. "We'll be open for business. And we have a number of ways for our customers to receive products and services from us strike or no strike." A strike is in no one's best interest, and it's baffling that union leadership would call one when we're offering terms in which our employees in these contracts  some of whom average from $115,000 to $148,000 in total compensation will be better off financially," the company said. The capitalist world system is a system that gives priority to endless accumulation of capital. People and firms are accumulating capital to accumulate still more capital a process that is continual and endless. Even in the midst of a nation wide protes
t AT&T was determined to leave their image blemish free in the eyes of its consumers all while still trying to make profit.

These press releases were all lies because AT&T was not creating jobs for United States workers at that moment and due to the strike and lack of workers at most AT&T stores and all center many locations were forced to close until further notice. After three days on strike AT&T and the CWA workers began negotiation talks because the union members had been preparing to engage in another weekend strike. AT&T granted the demands of its employees by first finalizing new contracts for the workers, contracts included improved pay and benefits and also assurance that job will not be cut and moved overseas. Because competition drives capitalism the only way for AT&T to remain competitive was to expand the working class, so that they stayed ahead of their competitors here in the United States. Expanding the working meant agreeing to their demands in order to assure that stores wouldn’t be closed for another another day.

Conclusion

The 2017 AT&T workers strike had both competitive actors, such as the Communications Workers of America union and AT&T, Verizon and AT&T whose seven week strike helped the AT&T workers tremendously during their strike theirs, and cooperation actors, such as the Communications Workers of America union and the outsourced workers in semi peripheral states. Wallerstein’s theories gave context to the AT&T strike and helped us conceptualize it by placing it in world system of the core periphery relations along with the quasi-monopolies, and Karl Marx was able to explain it through the evolution of the mode of production, which then entails the ramification. Marx’s theories allowed us to analyze the class relations between the bourgeois, AT&T and the proletariat, CWA workers.

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