‘Downsizing’ Strains AT&T; Employees

For 24 years, for half her life, Shirley Armstead has worked at an AT&T; service center in the City of Commerce.

“I never had to worry about what tomorrow will bring,” she said.

She does now.

Armstead, a metal fabrication technician, is about to become a casualty of AT&T;’s seemingly endless campaign of “downsizing,” an annual exercise the corporation performs in an effort to remain competitive in the post-divestiture world of telecommunications.

On Wednesday, while AT&T; Chairman Robert E. Allen was boasting of a 12.5% first-quarter profit increase at the $7-billion corporation’s annual stockholders meeting here, Armstead was at work, fretting over her place in the roster of 9,000 people AT&T; plans to trim from its non-management work force of 165,000 by the end of the year.

While Allen was defending the cuts by proclaiming to stockholders that “no company can compete unless it sizes its work force correctly,” Armstead was talking about the anxiety of being one of those cuts--of knowing her job is probably leaving Los Angeles, to be consolidated elsewhere, but not yet knowing whether she’ll be the one who fills it.

“I’m driving home falling asleep out of pure desperation and boredom,” she said. “The daily conversation we have here is, ‘what do you think the (early-retirement) offer will be?’ ”

Downsizing is a national fact of life. Eighty percent of companies with 5,000 or more employees have reduced their work forces in the past four years, and the trend shows no sign of slowing, according to Right Associates, an outplacement consulting organization.

Corporations with reputations for benevolence such as AT&T; try to cushion the blow by offering early-retirement incentives and freezing new hires. Still, 450,000 American workers lost their jobs in “mass layoff actions” in 1988, the last year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released layoff data. Since 1983, nearly 5 million workers who had held their jobs for at least three years have been dismissed; about a third of them took pay cuts of at least 20% in their next position, according to the Commerce Department.

Armstead, 49, works in a service center whose material distribution functions have been moved to Sacramento, whose phone service center has been sent to San Leandro, Calif., and whose remaining custom assembly positions will be shifted to Phoenix, Kansas City, Mo., or Charlotte, N.C., in a manner yet to be determined.

Throughout the AT&T; system, workers are waiting for a domino effect to occur. How many long-time workers will retire now that the company and its unions have tentatively approved a deal to nearly double to 34,000 the number of employees immediately eligible for pensions? How much movement will that create for workers in positions that are declared “surplus?” Will opportunities be available in AT&T; facilities nearby, or will employees have to move long distances to remain with AT&T; in jobs that, because they are unionized, pay wages that are hard to find these days?

“There’s so much ambiguity, people are very nervous,” admitted Mark E. Notestine, AT&T;’s vice president for human resources.

Leaders of the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represent 135,000 AT&T; workers, are more than nervous. They’re mad. In Cleveland, a union official went on an 11-day hunger strike to protest the job cuts. At Wednesday’s stockholder’s meeting, Jim Irvine, a CWA national vice president, told an audience of 1,000 that he was disappointed that “a healthy, profitable AT&T; does not (any longer) equate to employment security.”

Irvine complained in an interview that members in recent years have told horror stories of being laid off and taking jobs at other AT&T; facilities, only to find themselves out in the cold when downsizing hit those facilities.

Hector Fabela, president of CWA Local 9550 in Walnut and an AT&T; communications technician in San Bernardino, said he and his wife, who works at the same office, were notified two weeks ago that their jobs were being consolidated into a Denver office, a testament to technological advancements that are allowing AT&T; to cut labor costs.

Both have nearly 20 years with the company--all of it in the San Bernardino office--but decided to go to Denver. However, their four teen-age children and stepchildren, who prefer to stay in Los Angeles, will not follow. Two are old enough to get their own apartment here, and the other two will probably move in with Fabela’s first wife and his current wife’s ex-husband.

“It’s tearing up people’s families,” Fabela said.

Exacerbating Fabela’s frustration was the fate of another co-worker, Richard Freislinger, who friends say had been agonizing over whether to go to Denver or another newly centralized center in Atlanta to keep his job.

Freislinger, 39, left work early Monday, complaining that he did not feel well. Heading home to Yucaipa on the San Bernardino Freeway he collapsed from what the California Highway Patrol said may have been a heart attack. His car rolled across the freeway and came to rest near a tree, where rescuers found him dead. Autopsy results are pending.

Inside the Los Angeles Convention Center on Tuesday night, 1,000 employees and stockholders snacked on elaborate noshes during “family night,” a tradition on the eve of stockholder meetings. Christine Macalinao, 22, of Whittier, who works in equipment billing at a Monterey Park AT&T; center, was waiting for a plate of fettuccine Alfredo.

“I’d been working at a credit review company before I went to AT&T;,” she said. “I thought at AT&T; my future would be set, I’d be in a place where I could stay, where I would be secure. Now, I don’t know. I’ve been told my job’s not in danger, but there are always rumors going around. It’s gotten so bad our managers are telling us, ‘You better get a resume together.’ ”

SPARKS FLY: AT&T; shareholders defeated a proposal that would have denied funds for groups supporting abortion rights. D2