Gov. Wolf joins AT&T employees striking in State College

STATE COLLEGE -- Thousands of AT&T employees are on strike across both the state and country.

They're urging the company to come to the bargaining table to negotiate better contracts.

In State College, Gov. Tom Wolf stopped by one store to show his support for those on strike.

More than two dozen people held signs to send a message to AT&T that they want to keep good jobs in the area.

"What do we want? Good jobs," those striking chanted.

"We've been without a contract since February 2017,” said Josh Aboud, the local branch representative with CWA 13000.

Aboud says AT&T is outsourcing jobs to authorized retailers and sending call center jobs overseas.

Andrew Arietta has been working at the State College store on North Atherton Street since October 2015.

"Everything's gotten worse since I started here,” Arietta said. “I really love AT&T as a company, but they really need to make a change before they see it negatively impact their business."

Wolf stopped by to take photos and show his support for the workers Sunday afternoon.

"I think what they're doing is the right thing,” Wolf said. “This is what you're supposed to do in a free and open system -- make sure that your workplace is fair and that's all they're asking for and I think I want to show support for that."

And all these employees want is a fair contract to support their families.

"We really appreciate Gov. Wolf coming out, showing his support,” Arietta said. “It just goes to show you who's really on our side and we think we're going to win after a fair fight."

"Currently in our last contract, we were bargained for 10 sick days,” Aboud said. “By the time we took the 8th day off, we were fired. So we can't take care of our families if we don't have a job."

"A strike is in no one's best interest, and it's baffling that union leadership would call one when we're offering terms in which our employees in these contracts -- some of whom average from $115,000 to $148,000 in total compensation -- will be better off financially," AT&T said in a statement.

Aboud says that's not true.

"We make nowhere near that. We want them to come to the table, make us a contract that is fair to everybody."

The statement also said, “What's most important is we're all family, whether you're a union member (or) not. Like any family we have our disagreements but we'll sort them out. We've reached 29 fair agreements since 2015 covering over 128,000 of our employees, and we're confident we can do the same here.”

"We really don't want this to go to a long term strike if possible, but if that's what's going to happen, we're prepared to do it," Arietta said.