While Randall Stephenson gushes about holiday bonuses and creating jobs, he’s been busy swinging the ax.
The AT&T boss — citing a mountain of cash the telecom giant will keep because of Trump’s tax cuts — said this week that AT&T will pay out $200 million to employees by awarding 200,000 of its rank-and-file year-end bonuses of $1,000 each.
That’s on the heels of last month, when CEO Stephenson pledged to create 7,000 jobs with $1 billion AT&T it expects to save on taxes.
“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.
Meanwhile, however, a slew of AT&T layoffs nationwide looks poised to claim casualties running into the thousands. As The Post reported this week, AT&T fired more than 700 cable installers earlier this month.
Elsewhere, sources said AT&T has lately laid off 215 high-skilled technician jobs in nine Southern states. Those jobs, many paying $36 an hour, will be eliminated in the first quarter, sources said.
“It just seems funny that if they are going to create 7,000 jobs, why it is necessary to lay off 215 Southeast workers?” one of the skilled technicians griped to The Post.
Add to that 280 jobs that will be cut beginning Feb. 17 at AT&T’s Dallas credit and collections center, a source to AT&T confirmed. Also in February, 278 jobs will be cut at AT&T’s El Paso, Texas call center. Yet another 87 positions will be scaled back at the company’s Kansas City, Mo. credit and collections center, according to the source.
AT&T also fired an undisclosed number of workers in November at its Atlanta-based entertainment wireless group, a worker said.
This smattering of layoffs alone — likely only part of the looming bloodbath, according to sources — could save AT&T as much as $100 million.
As such, the total layoffs could save AT&T enough cash to offset the $200 million in bonuses it’s planning — and which earned praise from President Trump earlier this week.
“That’s because of what we did,” Trump said, celebrating AT&T’s bonus plan. “So that’s pretty good.”
Labor lawyer Stephen Console, whose firm Console Mattiacci is representing workers suing AT&T in Trenton, NJ for age discrimination, alleges AT&T came up with a plan to replace its aging workforce with a younger one by the year 2020.
“We are very committed to showing exactly what AT&T is doing in connection with laying off older workers,” Console told The Post.
From Jan. 31, 2016 to Jan. 31, 2017 AT&T employment fell by 5 percent from 281,000 to 268,000, according to public filings.
A New York Times profile of Stephenson in February 2016 said senior executives believed eliminating 30 percent of AT&T’s workforce by 2020 was not out of the question.
“It’s not uncommon for our employment levels to fluctuate over the course of time,” an AT&T spokesman said, saying company is “adding people in many parts of our business that are experiencing higher customer demand.”
But the spokesman also admitted that “technology improvements are driving higher efficiencies and there are some areas where demand for our legacy services continues to decline. Our employment figures reflect all of these factors.”
AT&T last year showed its financial support for the Trump administration donating $2.1 million to his inauguration, according to public records.
Stephenson also is president of the Boy Scouts of America and arranged for Trump this year to speak in front of the scouts.
Still, Trump’s Department of Justice last month sued to block AT&T’s $85 billion deal to buy the Time Warner deal. Some speculate this week’s announcements about bonuses and jobs are a bid to curry favor with the White House.