If you are an AT&T customer, you might have woken up Friday and thought to yourself, "Why, this weekend would provide a perfect opportunity for me to finally get down to my corner AT&T store, see about upgrading to a new cellphone and, maybe, look into subscribing to DirecTV!"
But you might want to put those thoughts aside and make other plans.
That's because as many as 21,000 AT&T wireless, DirecTV and wireline workers walked off the job Friday afternoon to start a three-day strike. The AT&T employees are part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, and they began the strike after failing to reach a new contract with the nation's No. 2 wireless carrier.
The strike involves AT&T employees in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Many AT&T employees in California and Nevada also joined the strike, which, because of its reach across AT&T's businesses, could result in company retail stores being closed through the weekend.
The AT&T employees are striking over some of the usual things that union workers are seeking to retain with their jobs: affordable benefits, fair wages and job security, as well as AT&T continuing to outsource jobs to locations outside of the U.S.
This weekend's strike follows on the heels of a similar brief walkout by 17,000 AT&T wireline workers in California and Nevada.
