Labor conditions and collective bargaining rights have worsened in the large US wireless carrier industry now that big telecommunications firms are increasingly outsourcing their retail sales and customer service operations from company-owned stores.
The sector, dominated by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, which together reported $337.1bn in revenue in 2022, is now plagued by wage theft, security issues, overworked staff and health and safety problems, according to a new report.
The study, by the Communications Workers of America and National Employment Law Project, found the three largest wireless carriers in the US have increasingly outsourced retail operations to authorized dealers and sellers. That has undermined collective bargaining rights for these workers and resulted in degraded working conditions in comparison with corporate owned and operated retail stores.
Cassandra Lopez Rosario worked at an authorized AT&T dealer in Michigan for a year before she was fired in December 2021 while out sick with Covid-19.
She explained throughout her employment, her store experienced several security problems, including robberies that went unresolved after complaints to district and regional management. She also said her store experienced high turnover and she was often left working the store by herself, meaning she had to skip breaks and find time to eat between customers or wait until she got home. That made managing her diabetes on the job even more difficult.
“There were times when I would get lightheaded and dizzy in front of customers and they would notice,” Lopez Rosario said. “My manager didn’t care.”
She also claimed she was responsible for training herself and had to pay out of pocket for cleaning supplies to clean the store window because management demanded the windows be cleaned but would not provide proper supplies to do it.
“They only care about money, they don’t care about your safety, health or about you in general,” she added. “They literally just underpay you and they would either keep your commission or cut it and if you’re a girl, you have to work twice as hard to get any sort of recognition or attention from anybody.”
In the report, a survey of more than 200 workers at authorized retailers in 43 states found nine out of 10 workers reported experiencing wage theft. Three out of four workers reported having to rely on at least 25% of their wages through sales commissions. Nearly two in three workers reported they were unable to take breaks during their shifts.
The reported wage theft includes being paid below minimum wage rates, denied overtime pay, denied commissions or bonuses or forced to work off the clock.
Workers in the survey also reported experiencing retaliation for raising workplace problems, being forced to work overtime, a lack of adequate job training, being forced to sign non-compete agreements and claimed an emphasis on commissions had driven poor sales practices and customer service at their retail stores.
About nine in 10 workers reported the wireless carrier that licensed their retail store still played a role in setting policies and practices at the retailers, despite authorized retailers’ classification as independent employers.
The report cites a recent surge in the outsourcing of retail stores by wireless carriers, with 60 to 80% of all wireless retailers operating as authorized retailers as opposed to being corporate owned and operated.
“It is an increasing trend,” said an AT&T retail employee and union steward in Kentucky who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “The things mentioned in the report are things we’re hearing on a daily basis.”
They cited significant differences between retail workers at corporate-owned stores who are unionized and those working at authorized retailers. Those differences involved staffing levels, training and pay structures, leading to problems at authorized dealers that often have to be corrected by union members at corporate stores.
From January 2018 to December 2022, AT&T’s use of authorized retailers increased from 61% to 73%, resulting in a loss of 10,000 unionized jobs, and highlighted significant differences in wages and benefits for unionized retail wireless workers compared with workers at authorized retailers.
“They take jobs and money away from us in corporate stores,” said Karen Nagjee, a retail sales employee at AT&T in the Atlanta, Georgia area and CWA Local 3204 AT&T Mobility vice-president. “When I used to work in an authorized retailer, I would get called into work at the last minute and my commissions weren’t paid on time.”
She noted the poor working conditions in authorized retailers, and sales practices referred to as “cramming and slamming” where workers at these dealers are pressured to hit sales and commission targets, often adding things on to customer accounts who are unaware until they receive their bill.
“I applied at AT&T because it was a union job,” Nagjee added. “Workers at authorized retailers are underpaid and overworked, partly because of their management forcing them to do things that in my union contract, I’m clear of.”
Most of Netflix’s 238 million streaming customers around the world will be unaware that the company first launched 25 years ago as a DVD mailing service. Even fewer might realise that operation has continued, with under 1 million people still subscribing.
But now the company is finally hitting the stop button, with its five remaining US distribution centres mailing out their final discs to American customers on Friday.
These DVD diehards will be allowed to keep these titles rather than return them, meaning some will get up to 10 as a goodbye present from a business that boasted as many as 16 million subscribers at its peak.
“It is very bittersweet,” Marc Randolph, Netflix’s co-founder and the chief executive when the company shipped its first DVD, told Associated Press. “We knew this day was coming, but the miraculous thing is that it didn’t come 15 years ago.”
Netflix does not break out the number of DVD subscribers in its figures, but according to an AP estimate fewer than 1 million people now subscribe to the service.
Randolph came up with the idea of a DVD-by-post service in 1997 – in a challenge to then rental market leader Blockbuster – with his friend and fellow entrepreneur, Reed Hastings, who eventually succeeded Randolph as CEO. He only stepped aside from that role this year.
The first disc sent out by Netflix was Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice in March 1998 and since then the company has shipped 5.2bn of them. Its most popular title was the Sandra Bullock vehicle The Blind Side.
However, Randolph said he knew that DVDs would not be the mainstay of the business and would be overtaken by watching films and TV shows through internet connections.
In 2011 Netflix decided to separate the DVD business from the streaming business, one year after Blockbuster went bankrupt – having turned down an opportunity in 2000 to buy Netflix for $50m (£41m) instead of trying to compete against it. The streaming giant is now worth about $166bn.
“From day one, we knew DVDs would go away, that this was transitory step,” Randolph said. “And the DVD service did that job miraculously well. It was like an unsung booster rocket that got Netflix into orbit and then dropped back to Earth after 25 years. That’s pretty impressive.”
Embattled Chinese property giant Evergrande has suspended share trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange only a month after it resumed trading after a 17-month suspension.
Trading in its two other units – the property services and electric vehicle groups – also stopped at 9am on Thursday, according to notices posted by the stock exchange.
The halt in trading comes a day after reports that the chair of Evergrande had been put under police surveillance. Hui Ka Yan, who founded Evergrande in 1996, was taken away earlier this month and is being monitored at a designated location, according to Bloomberg.
It is not clear why Hui might have been placed under residential surveillance, which falls short of a formal detention or police arrest and does not mean a criminal charge follows.
Evergrande had only resumed trading on 28 August after the company was suspended for 17 months for not publishing its financial results. Earlier this month, several employees of Evergrande’s wealth management unit were arrested in Shenzhen on unspecified charges.
Two former executives were also reportedly detained recently. Pan Darong and Xia Haijun had resigned last year after it emerged that 13.4bn yuan (£1.5bn) of deposits had been used as security for third-party loans.
Earlier this week, Hengda Real Estate, Evergrande’s primary unit in mainland China, missed principal and interest payments on a 4bn yuan bond. Hui resigned from his position as Hengda chair in 2021.
On Sunday, Evergrande said it was unable to issue new debt as Hengda was being investigated.
And on Friday it said meetings planned this week on a key debt restructuring plan would not take place, adding it was “necessary to reassess the terms” of the plan in order to suit the “objective situation and the demand of the creditors”.
China’s property sector is a key pillar of growth – along with construction, it accounts for about a quarter of GDP – and has experienced a dazzling boom in recent decades.
The massive debt accrued by the industry’s biggest players has, however, been seen by Beijing in recent years as an unacceptable risk for the financial system and overall economic health.
Authorities have gradually tightened developers’ access to credit since 2020 and a wave of defaults has followed – notably that of Evergrande.
Another Chinese property giant, Country Garden, narrowly avoided default in recent months, after reporting a record loss and debts of more than $150bn.
Elon Musk, owner of X, has confirmed he has ditched his team working to prevent disruption to elections, just days after the EU announced the platform, formerly known as Twitter, had the highest proportion of disinformation in three European countries.
Ahead of 70 elections around the globe in the coming year, the controversial businessman confirmed on X: “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”
According to reports, several staff working out of the Dublin office including the co-lead of election disinformation team, Aaron Rodericks, have left the company.
Overnight Musk appeared to give his first reaction to EU claims that X had the highest ratio of disinformation of the large social media platforms with a picture of three penguins bearing the logos of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube saluting another penguin bearing the X logo.
Rodericks had recently secured an injunction against the company restraining the company from taking disciplinary action after he had posted information about the company’s recruitment of staff for his team on his personal account.
He claimed the company did nothing after he had been subjected to a barrage of abuse from people who accused him of trying to suppress freedom of speech on X.
Last month he posted an advert on LinkedIn for eight new roles revealing he was seeking people with a “passion for protecting the integrity of elections and civic events, X is certainly at the centre of the conversation”.
Sweeping new laws came into force in August, compelling social media platforms to remove fake accounts, disinformation and hate speech, with X rivals Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Google and Microsoft all taking action and reporting back to the EU.
While Twitter quit the code of practice designed by the EU to help the companies comply with the new laws, Musk promised earlier this year he would comply with the rules.
Concerns over the platform’s approach to content moderation under Musk’s leadership have triggered an advertising boycott of the company, which relies on ads for the majority of its income.
Farhad Divecha, managing director of London-based digital marketing agency Accuracast, said: “The fact that Elon Musk seems to have disbanded the team that deals with election integrity sends a clear signal that preventing disinformation or maintaining a level of integrity isn’t a priority for X. This is one more factor adding to the concerns about brand safety, or ensuring brands aren’t associated with objectionable content.”