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AT&T promised 7k new jobs to get tax break, cut 23k jobs instead
- lovich 7y agoDid anyone really expect anything different? These are the same companies who took tax breaks in return for a promise to build out a fiber optic network and then never did it while pocketing the money. At this point AT&T and their peers aren't fucking society, we are actively asking them to
- rcombine 7y agoWe need stronger regulations on businesses and corporations. Eroding them has clearly resulted in negative effects.
- mfatica 7y agoNot sure how you reach that conclusion about regulations which are separate from taxes
- drocer88 7y agoWe need less regulations. We need more people boycotting Silicon Valley nonsense, AT&T, Verizon, Facebook , google etc. These guys LOVE regulation. It will build them a bigger moat.
- dtwest 7y agoWe need to stop making generalizations about regulations. Some are good, some are bad, some are both.
- SkyBelow 7y agoIs the solution to corrupt government giving money to corporations to have more government?
- bilbo0s 7y agoThat one's easy. The solution to corrupt government is good government, which people are free to elect if they choose. And the solution to corrupt corporations is to be tough on crime, ie - regulations with real teeth. Which the good government, that people can elect if they choose, can easily enact. Now if people don't want to elect good government, if they want to stick with the sort of government they are currently electing term after term, well, I guess I don't know what to tell them? But yeah, solution to electing corrupt government officials should be blindingly obvious. Don't do that. Elect officials who are not corrupt. When you hire someone for your company, depending on the position, you likely do a criminal check, a credit check, a general background check, a drug check, etc etc etc. All those kinds of employment related checks we all have to do. Most of us don't do that when we vote, we just kind of say, "Meh, this guy's on my team, I'll vote for him."
- snarf21 7y agoWe need to split up all the mega-mergers that have happened in the last 15 years. Every time one of these is realized, you are looking at a 10-20% job cut across both companies. Splitting them up will allow for more competition and bring the jobs back (somewhere).
- paulddraper 7y agoThinking regulation hurts big players like AT&T.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 7y agoThis article and your assertion are a really good example of how falsehoods become an unquestioned part of the accepted narrative. AT&T never "promised to create a net 7,000" jobs. The article admits as much: it quotes AT&T's CEO as saying that AT&T would invest an additional $1 billion, which is equivalent to 7,000 jobs. The article never analyzes the truth of that claim. It never determines whether AT&T actually invested that money. (In fact, AT&T is in the middle of a big push to deploy more fiber: https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/att-plans-to-expand-fiber-internet-to-14-million-locations-by-mid-2019. https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/att-plans-to-expand-fiber-in...) Instead, the article points to completely unrelated layoffs that resulted from a merger. (There was also the question of who exactly this "promise" was made to. The article quotes Stephenson's comments in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, not any sort of filing to the government.) The same is true for the "promise to build out a fiber optic network." AT&T never "promised" to do that. The arguments at the time were that deregulation would lead to higher investment into things like broadband. What nobody anticipated at the time was that the mobile revolution would happen, and all that new capital would be redirected to building wireless networks instead. That doesn't make the original claim a misrepresentation. And from a practical standpoint, it's better that all this money got invested in mobile instead of building FTTH.
- JaimeThompson 7y agoMore fully quoting him might be helpful "“From my standpoint, the driver of this is the business tax reform… if we get investment going, we get productivity going, we get wage gain going, we invest another billion dollars. 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,” Stephenson said at an event hosted by The Economic Club of New York on Wednesday."
- rayiner 7y agoRight, but the question still is: did AT&T invest that $1 billion? AT&T's capital expenditures in 2017 was $21.6 billion, and $25 billion in 2018: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/at-t-s-capex-to-rise-to-25b-2018-from-just-21-6b-2017-tax-reform-firstnet https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/at-t-s-capex-to-rise.... In 2019, it is expected to be $23 billion: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/at-t-expects-2019-gross-capital-investment-in-23-bln-range-1027860606 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/at-t-expects....
- cosmic_ape 7y agoIf that's true, isn't there some organization in the government that can sue them for this?
- padseeker 7y agoWhy would the government currently being run by people who are perfectly happy with this want to sue? It brings up an interesting point. The supposed motivation of the tax cuts was under the guise that it would increase jobs and mean more money for employees. I have a hard time believing anyone who voted for the tax cut actually believed that. And the people lobbying for the tax cuts are not legally obligated to make good on any of the things they said would happen when the tax cuts went through. The most likely thing is the people who were elected and passed the tax cuts are held accountable and then the cuts are rolled back but don't hold your breath.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- javagram 7y agoThe Republicans came into power promising to push a tax break from the beginning of the campaign. It was a crucial part of the 2016 campaign and their promise to voters. They aren’t going to sue AT&T over a non-legally binding statement in a speech nor would they have legal standing to do so even if they wanted.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoIf there was, that organization would announce an investigation that was quickly concluded with a redacted report and confidential hearing and no further action. The chairman of said agency would then mysteriously get a high-paid position as an advisor to the AT&T board of directors, a job that necessitates a young female intern and frequently requires travel to countries with legal prostitution.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 7y agoHow about next time we want to give a company a tax break to incentivize job creation, we make it a rebate payable in five years, contingent on the jobs actually being created. Of course, that assumes 1) that giving a tax break is actually an effective mechanism for creating jobs, and 2) that the people involved are not corrupt to begin with. I'm not sure either is a safe assumption.
- arcticbull 7y agoHow about payable after 5 years in equal installments over 5 years, subject to performance assessment by a third party auditor?
- jayd16 7y agoHow about focusing on public works so at least we get some contractually obligated public infrastructure out of the stimulus.
- beenBoutIT 7y agoThe border wall obsession on one side and Trump investigation obsession on the other have replaced any possibility of focusing on infrastructure.
- jayd16 7y agoThe Dems are talking about a Green New Deal for exactly this type of public works while the GOP has passed tax cuts and tariffs. Even if you assume the Democrats are all talk, the equivalency is a false one.
- ben509 7y agoIronically, the GND highlights why, as Obama put it, "there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects." [1] In a nuthsell, environmental regulations and activism make large public works projects nigh impossible. What's surprising is mostly that this is even a surprise. If environmentalists have been clear on anything, they've been clear that they don't like massive concrete and steel structures. It blows my mind that the Dems are going to try this again, when they're getting the mailers from Sierra Club promising to tie up these public works projects in court for 20 years. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html
- randyrand 7y agoFor all we know they would have otherwise cut 30,000? I don't think we should be enacting laws based on promises anyway. The effects of tax breaks are reasonably well understood without the need for promises.
- natpalmer1776 7y agoThe main issue here is that AT&T employs a large workforce that is not relevant to the current (Fiber) and upcoming (5G Cellular/WISP) service technologies being rolled out en masse. Which means as their legacy business units are retired or pulled back, they are letting go numerous employees while simultaneously hiring a slightly smaller number of more educated (up-to-date) workers to staff up their new business units. What we are seeing here is the decline of a historically booming industry (linemen) as the overhead required to maintain these networks becomes more specialized in nature and involves fewer people than before. Now, the ethical strategy to mitigate impacting their historically loyal workforce would be to re-train the copper linemen to work with the new technologies. The problem with this is that its' expensive. Insanely expensive. The training is made available to many of their current workers, in as many areas as possible (where the skills will be relevant) however at the end of the day an individual 'first-line' manager will not advocate for 64 year old Joe Schmoe with average performance stats to get this expensive training if 24 year old Billy Bob with a 'young man's' performance record is also asking to get trained.
- bluedino 7y agoDidn't they lay off all the landline people and dial-up internet people years ago? I remember the massive layoffs in our town in the early 2000's, the old AT&T HQ was vacant for years
- Aloha 7y agoI think you hit the nail on the head - and I suspect you'd find out that most of these 'job losses' are mostly attrition thru retirement, not actual layoffs
- dralley 7y agoNo, they are actual layoffs. You could have learned this with 5 seconds of googling or RTFA.
- sethhochberg 7y agoThis is an area that I'm really interested in watching as there is more discussion around tech unions - the industry moves so fast, an emphasis on retraining seems essential when you'd be setting one up. Legacy unions haven't had to deal with making retraining as important a part of their value proposition in the past, but "we'll keep you safe, compensated, and relevant as the industry changes" is a pretty compelling platform. The IATSE (union for technical/artisan roles related to film/tv/audio/events/etc) created a training trust for their members in 2011 and, from what I've heard, it seems to be working pretty well. https://www.iatsetrainingtrust.org/ https://www.iatsetrainingtrust.org/ I'd love to see other unions take notes when their industries start to modernize. They do all of the standard OSHA training, etc, but also keep Lynda.com subscriptions for their members, reimburse group craft training organized by local chapters, and have developed some specific certificate programs for retraining into A/V roles from less technical ones.
- ben7799 7y agoI had a Software Engineering contract at Verizon around the time Fios was starting up. Verizon went through/is still going through the same thing. The companies are a bit sketchy but the whole mismatch in workers is a real thing. They had lots and lots of unionized 55+ blue collar guys who couldn't even login to a computer and had near zero interest in learning. It always felt like the union was trying to fight for the status quo as opposed to trying to facilitate moving forward. So it gets to look real attractive to try and get them to retire early and hire some young guy since the job requirements have switched to needing lots of computer skills. The whole tax part.. that's just standard "Be as evil as possible." Given the whole "Be as evil as possible part" the union does become very necessary.
- wnevets 7y agoHow much more proof do we need a sociality that tax breaks to create "jobs" is just a scam?
- throwayEngineer 7y agoYou will always have masses of people that think government can create jobs. It's not a fact driven problem. It's that companies will pay the members of a political party to create special interests. I don't know the best solution, but I certainly don't trust the federal government to be the solution.
- throwaway55554 7y agoWhen does AT&T never break a promise? They broke promises here. They broke promises with Time Warner merger. They promise broadband speeds and deliver dial up speeds. They promised raises after the tax break and only gave bonuses. They promised to stop selling location data and kept doing it. They promised 5G and only gave us 5Ge. (Ok, that ones a joke). I mean, Randall is a master at lying on the scale of Zuckerberg. There's lies, damn lies and then AT&T saying, "hold my beer!".
- throwayEngineer 7y agoCan we stop letting the government make deals? They are doing a terrible job. When AT&T couldn't maintain connection at my home, and wasted 3 half days fixing it, and didn't fix it, I stopped doing business with them. This is a failure of government making one sided deals.
- KorematsuFred 7y ago"Jobs" as a political issue to bargain vote is the real problem. Finally the voters ask their representatives "what you have done for jobs?" It is that misplaced attitude of voters that eventually gives us these evil policies and pretty much nonsensical claims like "someone else is taking our jobs". Every company out there is trying to employ more people. The only problem is in finding people who are a right fit, who have right skills and so on. The problem becomes more acute in a country like USA where economy is always in optimal mode. Everything you get in USA is mostly state of art requiring specialized skill. Government has zero role to play in "creating jobs" or "attracting jobs". If government gets into that it will end up with corruption with 100% probability. Government however can play a big role in ensuring people have skills. Government is the only entity that can publish macroeconomic data about skills and shortages, Government can help universities and community colleges and private entrepreneurs develop those skills.
- gridlockd 7y ago> Every company out there is trying to employ more people. That isn't true, many companies have far too many employees relative to the size of their business. Companies grow much in the same way that bureaucracies do (see Parkinson's law). Firing people isn't necessarily easy, but it can be very profitable. > The only problem is in finding people who are a right fit, who have right skills and so on. Don't forget price. > Government has zero role to play in "creating jobs" or "attracting jobs". It has a massive role in increasing the price and risk of hiring people. Corporate taxes also directly affect the risk/return calculations for new investment. This article makes it sound like AT&T execs lied about creating jobs, but they de-facto didn't. Creating 1000 jobs through investment doesn't imply not getting rid of 1000 other jobs through restructuring. Of course you're not going to be boasting about planned layoffs in the same breath, at least not to the press that serves the general population.
- zanny 7y ago> Every company out there is trying to employ more people. Every company out there is trying to make more money. If employing people doesn't correlate, and the trends between the two (making money and employing people) are diverging, then companies will make more money and employ less people. It happens for many reasons - the solvable, as is the case with market capture monopolies, particularly for services (there exist patent troll businesses who employ no one, make no products, but sue with acquired IP rights to make large amounts of profit) and the "unfixable" as is the case with automation and technological efficiency. The last 30 years have largely been defined by American businesses moving operations towards profit without labor - the per-employee revenues of some of the largest corporations are ludicrous compared to what could be found back then. That trend is unlikely to reverse and very likely to go exponential.
- olliej 7y agoWhy aren’t tax breaks like these ever made absolutely conditional on companies doing what they’ve said they would do? Eg if you say you’ll do X in exchange for a tax cut, and don’t do it then they have to pay back those taxes, with interest (otherwise there’s little downside)
- javagram 7y agoThey are when they are intended for a specific purpose. E.g. tax credits for jobs are often given to companies like amazon in exchange for locating their HQ in NoVA . If the deal falls apart the credits automatically vanish or reduce proportionally. This tax break was a general reduction in the corporate tax. It applied to every company in America and wasn’t created in exchange for a specific promise. The concept was that we switch our US tax rate to a globally competitive rate, while also getting rid of the incentives for companies to shelter money overseas rather than spend it in the US after being double taxed.
- rconti 7y agoCoincidentally, AT&T just strung fiber up on my street in late March, about a week or two after Sonic announced they'd be rolling their own. For the past 3 weeks I've been happily using un-capped symmetrical gigabit fiber provided by AT&T, and re-sold by Sonic. Once Sonic rolls theirs later this year, I'll immediately switch to them and save another $40/mo. As if I needed more incentive to make sure no more dollars flow into AT&T and other incumbent utility providers.
- tpurves 7y agoI've heard this story before. Friend of mine runs a small manufacturing business in Canada. Got subsidized by a Canadian government program to import and install a big new modern machine for his shop floor from Germany. Goal of the gov program obviously being to create manufacturing jobs. And sure enough, 3 new and good union jobs required to operate the new thing, and because the new thing is so modern and highly automated, he was able to lay-off 20 other workers it took to run the older machines it replaced...
- icxa 7y agoThis story is so common it has a name: the paradox of subsidies.
- rchaud 7y agoWas the explicit purpose of the grant to increase employment? Or simply make the business more competitive with advanced machinery? These agreements can be set up such that the grant need not be repaid only if the business creates X full time jobs over a period of Y years. If that condition isn't met, the grant is repayable.
- aeturnum 7y agoI'm sure that AT&T will helpfully explain that they hired 7,000 people and laid off 30,000 people for totally unrelated reasons.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- maxhedrome 7y agoNo, the problem here is that AT&T is, and always has been a raging back of cocks.
- godzillabrennus 7y agoThe CWA union quoted in this article has been fighting its diminishing power for years. About 10 years ago I spoke with them about DSLAM vs IP DSLAM tech. The contracts they had were only requiring union techs be used for equipment that didn’t use internet protocol. They didn’t like what I had to say about IP DSLAM.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xof711 7y agoAT&T is just another big Corporation, not a person! Why would we expect them not to do what best for the shareholders vs. what good for its employees???!!!
- ausbah 7y agoDo these tax breaks not have any regulatory teeth? "If you fail to do X, you must pay us back."
- spacemanmatt 7y agoMAGA
- RIMR 7y agoDoes anyone here actually buy the "giving the rich more money lets them create more jobs" BS anymore? Hasn't trickle-down economics been thoroughly disproven at this point?