CWA Sues to Force Arbitration for ‘Unjustly’ Fired DirecTV Employees

AT&T Mobility needs until Nov. 21 to answer the Sept. 19 Communications Workers of America complaint to compel arbitration for DirecTV employees who CWA alleges were “unjustly” terminated during the summer of 2021 and are entitled to a grievance process under an existing collective bargaining agreement. Additional time is needed “to continue investigating the factual and legal basis” of CWA’s claims, “in advance of filing an appropriate response,” said an unopposed motion Monday (docket 1:22-cv-00954) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin.

The grievance CWA filed in September 2021 on behalf of the displaced workers "did not address any act by the new DirecTV as the new employer of the bargaining unit employees," said the complaint. The grievance and the complaint involve "the contractual violations by the old employer in spinning the employees off from the AT&T affiliates,” it said. The terminated employees did not receive the severance stipulated under the CBA, said the union.

The lawsuit concerns only the transactions affecting employees who worked for AT&T before the new DirecTV’s assumption of the 2020 CBA with CWA, it said. AT&T’s “unilateral decision to only hear the grievance outside the formal grievance process has resulted in the case having proceeded as far as it can in the grievance and arbitration processes absent judicial intervention,” said the complaint.

AT&T's position is “that it no longer has a grievance and arbitration agreement with CWA that covers these allegedly aggrieved members and has no obligation to entertain this grievance,” said the union. AT&T and the CWA had several discussions concerning how to move forward with the grievance, “including the union’s proposal that the first step of the grievance process be skipped so as to move forward expeditiously to arbitration,” it said.

AT&T responded July 11 that it was willing to meet with the union over the grievance, said CWA. But the company “did not consider the matter subject to the formal grievance process and, as such, the parties never met over the grievance.”

CWA “has exhausted its good faith efforts to pursue the grievance” through the formal procedure under the CBA, but the union’s “proper use” of the grievance procedure has been “wrongfully blocked” by AT&T, it said: “The grievance is thus ripe for arbitration.”