Labor

The Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) adopted a recommendation that would mandate the use of contractors to move telephone company equipment to make room for new attachers' equipment. This is work that is currently performed by trained, skilled, career employees at AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, and other employers. The BDAC recommendation threatens public safety.

The Internet Association -- a key voice for Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech giants in the nation’s capital -- is kicking off a new initiative to try to diversify the industry’s predominately white, male ranks. For years, Silicon Valley and other tech hotspots around the country have faced constant condemnation for failing to hire and retain employees from underrepresented groups. Among the critics is the Congressional Black Caucus, a powerful group of lawmakers that has even threatened regulation if tech doesn’t make major changes.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's claim that repealing network neutrality rules will boost network investment didn't get much support from Verizon's latest spending forecast. Verizon's network spending won't change much in 2018, and the company also won't be using its newfound tax savings to upgrade its broadband networks. Verizon reported $17.2 billion of capital expenditures in calendar year 2017, with the net neutrality rules in place the entire year.

Apple said that it will spend $350 billion in development and create 20,000 jobs to the United States in the next five years, following the recent corporate tax changes and a greater push to increase manufacturing in the US.  As part of this investment, it will also build a new U.S. campus — focused on technical support for customers — in a location to be announced later in 2018.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) members have approved a four-year contract with AT&T by an overwhelming majority after a difficult monthslong labor standoff. The deal rolls back offshoring and outsourcing and sets a new standard for wireless retail and call center jobs in America.

[Commentary] While we’re engaging in a new assessment of technology’s transformative impacts, no one should leave aside tech’s most physically enormous influence: its big role in reshaping the nation’s urban geography. Scholars have for years suggested that tech might alter the city hierarchy. Most notably, Beaudry, Doms, and Lewis showed more than a decade ago that the cities that adopted personal computers earliest and fastest saw their relative wages increase the quickest.

The engineer who was fired by Google after he criticized its diversity policies is suing the internet giant, alleging that he and others at Google were harassed over their conservative political views. 

Apparently, Comcast fired about 500 salespeople shortly before Christmas, despite claiming that the company would create thousands of new jobs in exchange for a big tax cut. Comcast apparently tried to keep the firings secret while it lobbied for the tax cut that was eventually passed into law by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in late December. The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed the Comcast firings this week in an article based on information from an anonymous former employee, Comcast documents, and other sources in the company.

In eastern Kentucky, the collapse of the coal industry, long a major employer, created severe economic hardship. Though a successor to coal hasn’t yet emerged, government agencies and economic development organizations at all levels are aware that the region needs to participate more fully in the digital economy. Efforts are underway to retrain miners and other displaced workers as computer programmers and homebased call center agents.

AT&T was sued by a workers' union that is trying to stop the company from instituting what it calls a "massive layoff." Thousands of employees are reportedly being laid off by the company, which reported $39.7 billion in revenue and $6.4 billion in operating income last quarter.