At the end of 2019, telecommunications giant AT&T had a little under 250,000 employees. The previous year, it had had about 20,420 more employees than that. This means that AT&T downsized, or shed, or cut 20,000 jobs in 2019—about 7.6% of its work force. Ars Technica reports that during that exact same time, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s total compensation was more than $32 million. According to Ars Technica, that’s a 10% raise! U! S! A! U! S! A! U! S! A!
AT&T continues to cut jobs—a process that it is now calling “headcount rationalization.” It is also promising to slow spending on building out its network and cutting costs across the board—which they have called “operator expenses.” On an entirely unrelated note, AT&T is looking at saving as much as $42 billion from the Republican tax scam giveaway cut.
This is great news for CEO Stephenson and his investors, and not great news for people working at AT&T. It turns out that the trickle-down economics that has never worked for most people continues to work only for the top 1%.