I’m an abfs tech in SE and have noticed a lot of work that falls within our purview is getting assigned to contractors this year. The way it’s supposed to work is a PM should be asking the local FSM if he has techs available as he has FROR. Only if he refuses the work does it then go to a contractor. This hasn’t been happening and they are sidestepping abfs a lot. Anyone else seeing this trend ? Union appears to be asleep at the wheel as the company is doing this in the open.
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I had a contractor into my business to replace my IP flex router and he didn't know what the orange lights on the lan ports meant
I'm ready to go, just give me my notice and I'll leave this disgracefully run company in a New York minute! T will become a case study in business schools all over the world on how not to manage a major corporation!
“ There's nothing highly technical about what we do, essentially, unbox equipment, rack and stack it and turn it on, that's about it! But, ATT thinks we do a bang-up job and are worth it!”
I disagree. I send ABFS some highly technical work and it’s almost always handled professionally and on time. Granted, we have some id--ts that I’m not sure how they got the job; but I am generally happy with the ABFS techs we encounter.
ABFS is garbage work for garbage people -
Typical Capitalistic bullsh-t to keep the Ponzi scheme running
I’m an ABFS tech and couldn’t agree more. Our jobs are super easy and we get paid 42 an hour to do it. And don’t get me started on when we go into double time. Easily pull 120k a year for essentially doing nothing. Our jobs are not going anywhere. Sure the company sometimes uses contractors. So what. They’ve doing that for decades. Our jobs aren’t going anywhere.
Apparently, somebody within ATT thinks that the ABFS techs are worth the money they pay us even though the job could be taught to anybody in about 1 day and a half. There's nothing highly technical about what we do, essentially, unbox equipment, rack and stack it and turn it on, that's about it! But, ATT thinks we do a bang-up job and are worth it!
Who cares really? Nearly all ABFS work is CPE related on the unregulated side of the demarc anyway. If I was your FSM, I’d FROR every GD job that came down the pipe as long as it’s not OCS related. You ABFS techs in the SE really do think your a breed apart don’t you? You guys act like you’re some kind of higher class tech that is above it all.
Breathe air = yes
Wear uniform = yes
Drive company vehicle = yes
Run inside wire = yes
Mount boxes in relay racks or on backboards = yes
Unbox phones and put them on desks = yes
Climb step ladders = yes
You don’t have to be a genius to do any of that.
Um, who cares? We've got much bigger fish to fry.
To the post regarding contractor pay, the contractor might pay a tech $20 an hour but they are charging AT&T much much more than that. And the work is usually sloppy and techs unprofessional.
They started doing it with the underground work in construction. Little by little they kept giving away bits and pieces of the underground work to contractors. We used to rod our own ducts, place all of the innerduct, and place all of the cable. Over time it was just given away and we were told it would help us be more productive. The union didn’t fight it and honestly, a lot of the techs didn’t either because they didn’t like getting dirty and getting into manholes every day.
Who is abfs? Cable splicers?
I'm an ABFS tech in the west and have not seen this. We're keeping all of our work in-house no matter what the circumstances are. We have enough technicians to do the work and complete the orders. We haven't heard anything about surpluses of technicians, however, you never know. Sure, we're paid a lot of money, but the quality of our work is exceptional!
They are testing the waters for a complete surplus of abfs techs. Why pay you guys 40 bucks an hour plus the cost of your benefits when a contractor will do it for 20.