After announcing that the majority of its United States employees would receive a $1,000 holiday bonus as a result of the new GOP tax plan, AT&T quietly laid off more than 1,000 employees.
The telecom giant announced that 200,000 U.S. employees who are union members, along with some non-union members, would receive a special $1,000 bonus and that the company would also reinvest more than $1 billion in its workforce.
"Congress, working closely with the President, took a monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world," CEO Randall Stevenson said in a news release last week. "This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs. In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees."
The statement continued, "Once tax reform is signed into law, AT&T* plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees — all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers."
But days prior to the announcement it was reported that AT&T had also quietly laid off 600 employees in Illinois and five other states throughout the Midwest. Further details about the layoffs are not currently clear, but the telecom titan said that layoffs were part of "workforce adjustments" to address it's declining legacy services, the Chicago Tribune reported.
"Technology improvements are driving higher efficiencies and there are some areas where demand for our legacy services continues to decline, and we’re adjusting our workforce in some of those areas as we continue to align our workforce with the changing needs of the business." a statement said, the Tribune reported. "Many of the affected employees have a job offer guarantee that ensures they’ll be offered another job with the company, and we’ll work to find other jobs for as many of them as possible."
It was then reported that the company had given more than 700 DirecTV home installers pink-slips, according to the New York Post.
The timing of the moves is peculiar, as AT&T has clashed with the Trump administration after the company was sued by the Justice Department over its attempt to acquire Time Warner. President Donald Trump bashed the merger, which does pose serious oligarchical concerns and threatens consumers. According to the Tribune, the president said the deal would put "too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."
But the company also praised the recently signed GOP tax plan and could have touted its employee bonuses and reinvestment plans in order to get back in good favor with the Trump administration.
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