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AT&T Brings 3,000 Support Jobs Back To U.S.
Says they'll hit their goal of 5,000 by this summer...

You might recall that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson made some waves last year when he stated the telecom giant was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the States from India. As of last March, AT&T had only managed to bring back 1,400 of those promised 5,000 jobs, Stephenson blaming the US education system (not cost savings by AT&T) as a major reason why.

If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down.
-AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson, on the U.S. education system
"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," said Stephenson of the US education system in 2008. "We're able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we're able to do it in Austin, Texas -- I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is."

Apparently AT&T was able to find 1,600 well (or well enough) educated Americans in a little less than a year after all. The company today announced that they've now brought back 3,000 of the 5,000 promised jobs. The outsourced jobs had largely been for BellSouth, with the bulk of the new support jobs now located in broadband support centers in North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Kentucky.

"We expect to complete this ambitious 5,000 job in-sourcing initiative by this summer, less than three years after the program was announced," said Bill Blase, senior executive vice president of Human Resources. "These are good jobs with good wages and benefits, and we are delighted to have them back in-house and on shore."

Most recommended from 87 comments


Pv8man
join:2008-07-24
Hammond, IN

3 recommendations

Pv8man

Member

AT&T reminds me of

When I was 16 (in 2001) , there was a medium sized steel redistribution company in South Chicago that used to pay me 20-40 bucks to fix their buildings network when it went down randomly. It was a company of about 40-50 employees and PC's, and 2 file servers . They did not want to hire a technician because of the cost.

for almost 6 years, I kept coming back to fix their network for cheap when it went down. Hoping to get hired from them some day, their CEO kept praising me and leading me on when I would fix his laptop for him.

then one day they called me and said they had a job for me.

But it was a labor job out in the yard for $9/per hour, I needed the money so I took the job.

and of course, when I was working their, they would call me in to fix things all the time. Then they would not pay me the 20-40 bucks anymore, and tried to say that I was already being paid on the clock ($9/hour).

At that point I told them.

"Sorry, my job description is a union laborer, if you want me to keep fixing things you are going to have to pay separately for it at a minimum of $20/hour" (Which I thought was fair)

They did not want to pay that, so they PAID A TECHNICIAN TO MOVE TO THE USA FROM CANADA!! AND HIRED HIM AS AN OFFICIAL TECHNICIAN.

I've never felt more disgruntled...

Moral of this story...well don't fix things for cheap to try to get hired.

Dogfather
Premium Member
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA

2 recommendations

Dogfather

Premium Member

Blame the system...

...that defends teacher interests before student interests.