AT&T; Pleads for Shareholder, Union Patience

AT&T; Corp. pleaded for patience as shareholders questioned the telephone and cable television giant’s slumping stock price and union activists urged it to back actors’ unions in their strike against TV and radio advertisers. AT&T; Chairman C. Michael Armstrong told about 800 shareholders that the company’s investments in wireless, cable TV and data services will spark future growth and allow it to escape its legacy as the caretaker of a shrinking consumer long-distance telephone business. “What your management is doing about this company and its stock price is building businesses that are growing in a fantastically growing industry,” Armstrong said at the annual shareholder meeting. AT&T; shares have fallen more than 28% this year over the company’s curtailed growth outlook for 2000, uncertainty about its $100 billion in investments in cable TV and general stock market weakness. The shares closed up 13 cents at $34.75 on the Big Board. Much of the meeting was overshadowed by comments from members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists unions, who lambasted the company for using nonunion actors in a commercial produced during an actors’ strike. Union actors urged the company to sign an interim agreement accepting the terms of the unions’ latest contract proposals in exchange for allowing union actors to work. Armstrong said he would investigate the matter.