The Investors Gain, The Employees Lose
According to CBS: AT&T Plans Major Job Cuts
The 10,000 planned job cuts are in addition to the 26,000 cuts AT&T has already announced – 13,000 due to SBC’s acquisition of AT&T Corp., which closed in November, and 13,000 due to shifting priorities in the business. The combined SBC-AT&T took the name AT&T Inc.
Three corporations are becoming one and 36,000 people are getting pink slips. If anyone thinks consumers are going to benefit they haven’t been paying attention. Part of the deal when AT&T was first broken up was to eliminate regulation of the industry to promote competition. The company may be re-forming, but the regulations aren’t.
Update: When the corporation was first broken up the long distance division that still called itself AT&T adopted its “DeathStar” logo. I should have probably called this post The Empire Strikes Back
