April 2012 Report:

April 17th, 2012

*Click Here to Read 2nd Part of CVP April Report!*

Yesterday morning it was announced that AT&T Advertising Solutions and Interactive was sold to Cerberus Capital Management for $750 million dollars in Cash and a $200 million dollar banknote. 

Once the transaction closes in mid-year 2012 the new company will be known as YP Holdings LLC and will be an independent, privately owned company and AT&T will receive a 47% equity interest. 

For those of you that don’t know your Greek Mythology, Cerberus is a 3 headed dog with a snake tail and snake heads protruding from its back that guarded the gates of hell. 

Two notable chairmen of Cerberus are John W. Snow, who was George W. Bush’s second Treasury Secretary and former Vice President Dan Quayle. 

After the closing of the sale, we will no longer be employees of AT&T, but will continue to be covered by our CWA bargaining agreement. It is now more important than ever before that represented employees of Advertising Solutions show there solidarity by being full dues paying members when we go to bargaining. The information that is available to all affected employees on interconnections the intranet site we access at work with a Q&A section tells us that the new company will assume the obligations under the impacted collective bargaining agreements, but as we all know the agreement expires August 4, 2012 and nothing that is in our current working agreement is guaranteed to be in our next agreement unless the CWA bargains for it. 

Unfortunately, I don’t know anything more than is described in the Questions and Answers Section on Interconnections and if you have any additional questions, you should send those questions per the instructions on the site. I spoke to MM Smith today and he said that the company has promised to start answering questions by Friday.

Additionally, he told me that the District Bargaining Chairs are in route to St. Louis tomorrow to try to get further clarification and answers to our many questions. As soon as I know anything additional I will update you.

He also asked that I caution you not to make a quick decisions concerning retirement or separating from the company until they get a chance to meet next week. 

Old news now is also that a surplus was announced on Tuesday, March 20^th for a total of 52 Artists, Field Collectors, Special Clerks, Sales Team Support Clerks, Directory Clerks, Customer Care Reps, and Credit Assistants in Charlotte, NC, Florida, and Georgia.

39 of those positions were in Georgia. The complete breakdown is list is linked to our CWA3204.org website. 

As a result of that surplus announcement, many of our employees requested SIPP and will be retiring. Tomorrow the remaining affected surplus employees will attend a meeting with Steve Andrews, our CWA 3204 Partnership Representative and Kim Coan with HR and given details of the options available to them as provided by our working agreement. 

Finally, I would like to announce that the decision was made last week to name John Mial and Suzanne Lang-Carter our Chief Job Stewards. Also, Anthony “Tony” Maronski has applied to become new Job Steward. 

Thank you to all my hard working Job Stewards and please keep us in your prayers.

Ruth Gravely