Is it true Stankey provided a QA response on the Q2 Earnings call with employees in July that seems crazy. I was laid off in March, so have been watching for it to hit the news. Did he really say we need a younger workforce and that age matters. That some floors in our hubs could be renamed ‘Shady Acres?’ I saw a post here about it but haven’t seen it anywhere else, so wondering if it is just exaggeration as I can’t believe he would say the quiet part out loud. Thanks for your input, as it just floors me.
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"Also, did you guys see the article about the guy who has worked for the phone company for 50 years?"
Can anyone find this guy in webphone? This smells like a PR story created with no need for facts.
Yes, he said it.
Yes, there ARE audio only recordings out there by people who recorded it on their phones. Cannot believe that people don’t know how to do this… use the voice memo feature.
No, the webcast recording was never released and will probably only be heard/seen by those who got a lawyer and sued.
Of course age matters.
AT&T would like to be rid of everyone old enough to participate in the pension program because it costs them an awful lot of money to keep it funded and maintain it when interest rates are this high.
They don't have this problem with new-hires because they aren't allowed to participate in said program.
The sooner we're out of their hair, the happier they'll be.
Why do you think they're going all stick instead of carrot when coming up with new schemes to get rid of their older workforce ?
on construction side it’s pretty common to encourage retirement at 60.some tend to get overly exuberant
Isn’t he one of those entitled boomers? He needs to go out the door too. He’s just too old to be running a company.
Also, did you guys see the article about the guy who has worked for the phone company for 50 years? He was giving careeradvice. Seriously, the guy is in another reality. The article forgot to mention that he spent most of his career in the Union. No one in Corporate America would ever keep somebody around 50 years anymore. Wonder if he plans to hang on until he dies. He said he dropped out of college during the first year because it would take too long to get a degree. I would never want this guy giving career advice to my kids. Just quit college because it’s too hard and go work for the phone company.
Not sure it will result in anything. Today I noticed the Yammer thread on this topic was update with a post by a fellow employee indicating he filed a COBC based on age discrimination and requested clarification on the company’s position on age discrimination and requested the webcast replay be made available for release and serve as further clarification of the same.
Stankey and Randall are accountable to nobody. Not the law. Not to the employees. And not even the shareholders.
i guess Stinkey can celebrate his 14.85$ stock price
“ He doesn't understand that his policies cause older workers to stick around and younger workers to leave.”
This. If there was an iota of trust that the company will honor its retirement benefits people would be able to retire with confidence. Having torn down that trust we hang around to accumulate extra savings to make up for the day when benefits like that appear to be on a path to being zeroed out. If he wanted all 55+ out of here they could have dangled a carrot - like limited time retirement benefit guarantees that would ease an individual’s planning - to incentivize leaving payroll. This “leave today because we’ll make tomorrow worse” cr-p is always going to backfire.
"most T employees are hard of hearing and didn’t really understand what he said on the call since their hearing aids were out. "
It was a webcast you d-mb fvck.
"Stankey’s comments were misunderstood, probably because most T employees are hard of hearing and didn’t really understand what he said on the call since their hearing aids were out."
If a CEO of a major corporation is "misunderstood" this badly then I would say they should have stayed on script. If he was shortsighted enough to say something like that off the cuff, he has no business with the title.
Saying something discriminatory against older workers goes to civil court.
Destroying evidence goes to criminal court.
“…the recently assigned SVP is calling her team "Peeps," with a full blown internal campaign playing on "#Peeps...”
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Hey, if you're in Mass Markets, the recently assigned SVP is calling her team "Peeps," with a full blown internal campaign playing on "#Peeps." So even older workers will feel as though they're 20-something, i guess. How hip and TMO-like shall it be. Ugh.
Unless you hire a lawyer and sue them, you’ll never see it. At this point it’s been deleted anyways.
@2sri+1oQTd6P5 - not sure it’s as simple as that.
AT&T is doing lots of other thinks that are not employee friendly. Sure management can do things to run the business as they see fit but let’s not oversimplify with “then leave” comments. If you spent more than a minute thinking this through and putting yourself in others shoes you should realize it’s not that simple.
Also, if it were just the AT&T employees hearing problems, then why not post the video so we can be corrected?
There would joy in Mudville if they would used VTP to downsize the older workers like they use to.
I'll about 4 years until I would think about retiring but I would look at it.
Stankey’s comments were misunderstood, probably because most T employees are hard of hearing and didn’t really understand what he said on the call since their hearing aids were out.
Stankey is a dirty dog with fleas and ticks!
He said it.
I’m an older worker these days in my 40s, he’s not wrong on the demographics, that would be a fact that our workforce is older. Dang near every one of them is waiting on a mythical package to leave, it’s all you hear about, they need to pay me to leave. People aren’t retiring for whatever reason. Personally I can’t wait to be able to retire.
All that being said, anyone that’s started with the company in the last 9 years does not have a pension (I’m in this group), so they aren’t going to stick around. There’s no reason to. I’ll be leaving the company in Jan. The relocation thing, the d-mb RTO stuff and treating folks like garbage (because the pension people will just take it) is causing a very high turnover in the younger ranks. Stank’s policies are the root cause of the company’s issues.
My thinking is the guy put his foot in his mouth; however, there is a basic point that is legit. We’ve got a lot of older folks close to retiring and the company needs to focus on replenishing. You’d have to do the same if you owned your own business.
That said, this shouldn’t be allowed as an excuse to layoff older workers.
You know I’m right.
Stankey (aka Gargamel) should lead by example and resign. He’s older.
Judging by how many old, grump men I work with, there isn't enough age discrimination. Old guys that don't even know what the internet is.
Yes, he did really say it, they know it, we all know it and there is NEVER going to be a RECORDING of it ever. Usually there's a webcast several weeks after a town hall, but not this one. McElfresh already had a webcast the other day for his townhall last Aug.. so you know it stung them. It is real. Age discrimination happens at T. But nothing is going to be done, nor Stankey and his minions would get reprimanded. Law and justice does not touch people with money unless they fock other people with money -
I am in my early 30s, I am looking to leave because of this RTO.
All of you WFH people had it on mute and did not hear a thing. You were doing laundry or mowing the yard.
"Stankey said he really likes Lily."
Who doesn't? Have you seen those service bars on her?
This wqsn’t Stankey’s message, but if we are all being honest this isn’t wrong! T offices do resemble nursing homes.
He did say that while it is true that a good deal of the surplussed agents will be more tenured and their loss will mean a lot of lost human capital, he saw it as an opportunity to bring in younger employees that have more in common with core AT&T demographic targets. So, yes, it was a very age-ist take to justify arbitrarily requiring long time employees to relocate on their dime.
The irony of Stankey's comments: I am a L1 manager and on my 11 person team (were 20 in 2020), no one is more than 55. But here's my management structure's ages: L2 manager is 57, district manager is in his 60s, assistant vice president is in early 60s, vice president is in mid-60s, senior vice president is in late 50s, president is in his mid-50s and then there's John. According to Stankey theory: it's the management structure that is too old and needs to reflect our customer base!!!
That plus why the heck do we have so many C-suit levels of management and why do I need an area manager that has 11 people?! AM does nothing except send me emails about when my accomplishments (that I write) are due, my objectives (that I write) are due, my timesheet deadline (that I code), mandatory company 'training', and any other edict that the district manager sends to him.
Seems to me we have a lot of management layers that could EASILY be done away with. Also seems that Stankey should get rid of the VERY OLD management personnel. What's left of the worker bees are much younger than the supervisors!! Any given day, our town halls look like a line of nursing home patients.
Couldn’t believe what I heard, not because it was so outrageous or hurtful to me as an employee over the ago of 50.
I honestly just couldn’t believe that there would be a CEO so boneheaded as to state out loud,, on a call with thousands of his employees, his disdain for a protected class of employees and his intention to get rid of them.
Angela Santone didn’t resign. She was fired.
"This was highly exaggerated. Desperate employees at T who have no other realistic employment options have been trying to promote this false story ever since. This wasn’t the message delivered." Hey John, is that you?????
It is not being exaggerated, I was on the call, he did say exactly that. It has nothing to do with desperate employees, it is a fact. I asked senior leadership for a copy of the call and was told that it would not be posted, it wasn't recorded, or whatever the excuse of the day is.
I heard it too.
Yes he did... I heard it! They never shared the replay..
a younger workforce more aligns with our customer base.
I don't believe I've ever met a younger person, let's say under 30, that proudly chooses to use AT&T. The only ones that do, only have it because they're on a family plan with their parents. Cricket, maybe, but I don't think it counts.
He didn’t need to say anything. He’s been doing it for several years now even before the 2020 purge.
He said old managers and young managers will be fired. AT&T needs money.
When HR People Analytic teams were instructed by Legal to delete all reporting and analysis showing employee tenure and age ranges that supported strategic plans and tactical decisions to force relocate older Pac-Bell, Ameritech, BellSouth and legacy AT&T teams to Dallas, Angela Santone tenured her resignation. Lori Lee is a loyal soldier and bulldozed all recording and analysis.
Yes, he did. It started with a question to McElfresh about whether he was concerned about losing experienced employees and after he essentially laughed it off, Stankey weighed in with the bit about demographics and not wanting old people with old experience.
He did specifically say that they were targeting older employees, and immediately after they mysteriously refused to replay the town hall on the website.