Here in real life.. AT&T laysoff more citizens and pockets the tax bonus.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/slap-face-t-workers-upset-080027903.html
The day after Paul Lorenzano found out he was being laid off from his job in January as an AT&T technician in Arcadia, California, the company sent out an email to all employees congratulating the workforce on AT&T’s profits and fiscal performance in 2019.
“We met or exceeded all of our commitments for the year. That’s thanks to a lot of good work on your part,” Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO, said in the email.
Lorenzano was devastated.
“That felt like a complete slap in the face, saying how great we were but here is your final pay stub because we did so great last year so we’re going to keep this money and not invest in back into the employment force like they said they would,” said Lorenzano, who worked at the company for over four years before receiving his termination notice, along with dozens of other AT&T DirecTV technicians across California.
It was not meant to be like this. Huge tax cuts, supported by AT&T, were meant to allow companies to hire more and pay better. But instead AT&T has cut 37,818 jobs in the US from when the Trump tax cut bill first went into effect in 2018 to the end of 2019, with more than 4,000 jobs cut in the last quarter of 2019, based on the company’s quarterly reports.
The company strongly supported the tax cut bill and promised workers a $1,000 bonus ahead of the bill’s passage amid claims of a hiring spree. (Hiring spree for offshored contractors)
The bill, passed in December 2017, cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, saving AT&T an estimated $21bn initially, with an estimated $3bn in annual savings. Despite AT&T’s promises to invest these savings back into their workforce, the company has shed the number of employees since the bill went into effect, while capital investments have declined. In 2018, AT&T’s capital investments declined to $21.25bn, and the company announced plans to reduce it further in 2020 to $20bn, while rolling out a three-year plan to spend $30bn on stock buybacks.
For newly unemployed workers like Lorenzano that situation has added insult to deep injury.