Anyone heard anything? Looks like the mass hiring of techs, managers, support managers, etc. for 2021 came to an abrupt end really quick. Doesn’t seem like the plethora of work that was supposed to happen, panned out. Are we in for another round of layoffs soon???
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Layoffs in BFS would be a welcomed event by many in the business unit throughout the country! The last severance offer was in Sept., 2017, so it’s a good time to clean house!
We have plenty of work in Georgia. My group just sent a tech on loan to Atlanta to help with there heavy work load and we were already covered up in work here in Augusta.
Sorry to say unfortunately, you’re probably right! That’s exactly how they conduct business, bass ackwards!
Nope. If I had to guess with the seemingly never ending lack of work the BS group will probably be adding folks. That seems to be how they do business .
It is slow even in the OOR areas of the country at least in the west. There are only around 4-5 orders per day with around 8 techs doing BFS work...do the match, just not enough work to keep all techs busy even 4 hours per day. It's been like this for at least the last year and a half or so. Something has to give, because this is not good business especially when you have $169B in debt hanging over your head!
Impending layoffs I think. I know that part of the Legacty-T contract for LNS and OOR techs in Business Field Services means they have to keep a certain number of folks on the payroll regardless of actual work volumes so probably little impact there, but I would be worried if I was an In-Region tech in the 21-states. Seems like a lot of techs sitting around getting at most, 1-2 dispatches a day and some days just spent staring at the wall collecting a paycheck. Same for all the new field managers that were hired. I see a lot of them with less than 10 direct reports which usually spells doom for a field manager. Thoughts??
A severance package should be offered at the very least even if layoffs aren't in the planning stages because it is very slow. Management keeps promising more work coming, but when?
BS techs are simply placeholders right now doing driveby supposed routines without any equipment to do them and deliberately lying on the checklists. This is the garbage that this company emphasizes instead of an honest days pay
That’s how BFS rolls...keep as many techs as unnecessarily possible without laying off anyone!
They don’t do layoffs. The Biz Serv plan is less work more techs. They need lots of folks sitting around with nothing to do apparently.
@1sqi...business field services consists of 2 different groups(with varying job titles depending on the region). 1. are the techs who work on the network side of circuits. Sometimes referred to as “Special services”, they do anything from an old copper point to point dry pair all the way up to the fastest fiber optic services available, to video services, & 911 services. The work is mostly private secure networks versus “residential grade” services. 2. Are the techs who work on the CPE side of the special circuits. Various jobs titles depending on the region as well. Sometimes referred to as System Techs. Since they are CPE only, they also can/do provide services in areas outside of the AT&T local wire center footprint as well. referred to as Out Of Region, it’s provides a much larger customer base than just the limited parts of the 21 states where AT&T is the local carrier.
ABFS (AT&T business field services) used to be datacom. They were founded in the early 80’s as CPE technicians that took care of universities and large accounts with onsite dedicated techs paid for by the customers and also street techs maintaining PBX’s, key systems and CPE work.
Most of these accounts were lost due to VOIP and AT&T taking a different direction on sales.
Previously Appendix G in the purple book, after having mediocre benefits compared to the Core
They were rolled into the Specials umbrella with business services during the last contract.
They’ve paid their dues and most have 30+ years of service, offer them ESIP and most would retire.
No layoffs at any time. T will continue to pay the BFS techs to sit around doing nothing and that’s straight from the supervisors since they too sit around doing very little if anything!
What is Business "Field" Services? I have heard of Bus Svcs.....What is Bus Field Svcs?