The three-day strike was in part a test of strength for a workforce that has never struck before. Despite this inexperience, strike participation across the country was solid. Many stores shuttered; managers scrambled to keep others open.

In Indiana, Local 4900 reported that 98 percent of workers at Mobility call centers and retail stores struck. That included the 95 workers at the call center in Fort Wayne who handle outbound calls. At 2 p.m. on Friday, May 19, strike captains, stewards, and area reps blew whistles in the center, letting everyone know it was time to finish their calls and walk out.

“Job security is our biggest fear,” said Babette Rakoczy, who’s worked at the Fort Wayne center since 2007. Back then it was part of Centennial Wireless, which merged with AT&T in 2009, and there were 200 employees. CWA reports that AT&T has eliminated 12,000 call center jobs since 2011—nearly one-third of all its call center employees.

In the days before the walkout, Rakoczy, a steward, set up a question box on her desk to encourage co-workers to raise questions about the strike. Then she solicited answers from union leaders and reported back to members.

RAIN OR SHINE

To get out of the rain during the strike—and get under management’s skin—Local 4900 sent a big delegation of members to a local mall Mobility store where the area manager was working. Decked out in the union’s red shirts, they sat in the food court right next to the store and walked a number of highly visible laps.

Mobility store workers share the call-center workers’ concerns about job security. Nationally, 61 percent of all AT&T-branded stores are now third-party authorized dealers. “That’s scary, thinking that one day, this time next year, this place could close and turn into an authorized retailer,” said Burse, “where there’s less oversight, the wages are less, the benefits are little to nothing, there’s no union, there’s no voice.”

“As a store manager for authorized retail, I made less than I do now as a retail sales consultant,” said Denny McCluskey of the South Bend Mobility store. He first ran into the union during the 2015 wireline contract campaign, when members were picketing one of the nonunion stores he managed. “I told them I had no gripe,” he said: “‘You guys are out here fighting for good jobs.’”

“As the company grows, and buys DirecTV and Time Warner, we just want to grow with them,” Burse said. “But a lot of us feel like the company’s going to leave us before we leave them.”

Workers say they’re also dealing with constant changes to their commission structure, as well as stagnant pay despite a workload that has dramatically increased in recent years. At the bargaining table the union is pushing the company to agree it can’t unilaterally change the commission structure.

MORE WORK, LESS PAY

All the workers came off the job at the AT&T Mobility store in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “Every year it seems like it’s gotten worse and worse as far as pay, health benefits, you name it,” said Ervin Abreu, who’s been with Mobility since 2008.

The Bensonhurst store is just a couple doors down from a unionized Verizon Wireless store. Despite fierce employer opposition, workers at six Verizon Wireless stores in Brooklyn joined CWA in 2014, and won a first contract as part of the 49-day Verizon strike last spring.

Colin Hull from the Verizon store joined the AT&T picket on his lunch break. “I came to support my AT&T brothers and sisters for the same reason we went on strike,” Hull said: “better pay and better conditions, and just to have that sisterhood and brotherhood.”

The Mobility workers are still without a contract as we go to print. The union reports little progress in bargaining. Whether a longer strike will be necessary to win remains to be seen.

In the meantime, workers say the strike gave them a taste of their own power. “There a new sense of pride,” said Burse. “The folks that are newer to the labor movement, newer to unions, they get it now: you stand up and fight.”