I work for AT&T in an office job; a lot of non-union employees got trained last year in the event of a strike that never happened. This happens every few years

I work for AT&T in an office job; a lot of non-union employees got trained last year in the event of a strike that never happened. This happens every few years; the WSJ wrote an article on it in 2012 (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304072004577323690274379410 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023040720045773236...). The general consensus was that none of us would actually be able to fix anything with the amount of training we received; my understanding is that it's a combination of regulations (we need to be able to say that the network will keep running in the event of a strike) and a bargaining chip (although to be honest, if I were the technicians working out there in the field I wouldn't be scared of us).