Golden Boy, the statue commissioned in 1914 by Bell System founder Theodore Vail, is the symbol of a company that doesn't exist. After all these years, somehow he has been able to avoid being laid-off.  We asked him to look back on his long career.

195 Broadway, New York City, 1916-1980
My mother is Evelyn Beatrice Longman who sculpted me in 1916. I was then hoisted 465 feet above street level to the top of AT&T's headquarters on Broadway in New York. And that's where I stood for 65 years. I had killer views during my glory days in downtown Manhattan and even made the cover of the phone book. I was a symbol of the power of America's telephone monopoly.

555 Madison Avenue, New York, 1983-1992
My new home, post-breakup. Looks cushy, right? Think again. Not only was I gilded, I was gelded. They finally realized I was not just a boy. (AT&T feared offending mid-town shoppers. Did Michelangelo's "David" have to put up with that?) It was a symbol of what was to come. We bade farewell to the Baby Bells in 1984 and marched into computers, trumpeting UNIX, our operating system. That flopped, so we bought NCR. We lost billions, laid off thousands, and wrote off our phone network. And we missed what could have saved us: the Internet.

Basking Ridge, N.J., 1992-2002
After we abandoned the Madison Avenue digs to those upstarts from Sony, I moved to the 'burbs. More space! Fresh air! But things only got worse. In 1996 we shed NCR, Lucent, and 70% of Bell Labs, our legendary research operation. More thousands of employees are laid off.

Bedminster, N.J., 2002-2009
Another decade, another office park. We deployed a risky strategy to spend $110 billion on cable companies. It drove us into the ground. We dumped everything but long distance, and then watched brutal price wars destroy the business. Ma Bell is almost recreated and now it’s come almost full circle as she tries to put back the pieces. Maybe SBC will move me out of the parking lot--if it doesn't lay me off.

Dallas, TX, 2009-Present
While the Union core contracts were in the mist of bargaining, I was whisked away to my new pedestal in Dallas. I guess they wanted me here close to the money. I’m still called the "Spirit of Communication", except I do not represent that when AT&T is bargaining new contracts with CWA. I now reside in the lobby of AT&T's headquarters on Akard Street, my latest home in 94 years.  At least I’m not out in the cold anymore. The last time they moved me inside, they gelded me right in the lobby of 555 Madison Ave.  What a mess!  I sure don’t want that to happen again, I have so little left.  Well, now that Wireless has taken off by being subsidized by the wired core, I guess the company will continue there profitable future by declaring more lay-offs. Some things never change.

AT&T continues to dump all their poor economic decisions on the backs of their core employees while demanding more work from fewer workers, not to mention the horrible treatment they dish out to our brothers and sisters at Wireless & Internet. The one thing I’ve learned while witnessing all that has gone by, is that as long as the rank and file stands together, they will prevail, just as we have witnessed so many times before.
 
The struggle continues.

In unity,

Roy Hegenbart
President
CWA Local 3250