- Charter says its acquisition of Cox will help reshore jobs and create new, good-paying roles
- Telecom union CWA isn't holding its breath
- The deal could also spell the death of DEI programs at both companies
Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey cast the company’s freshly announced $34.5 billion deal to acquire Cox Communications as “good for America.” But will it be good for telecom workers?
If you believe Charter, the answer is yes.
“We’ll rapidly onshore service jobs, insource jobs currently with contractors and we expect to hire field sales personnel in local markets,” Winfrey said on a call with investors. “We’ll offer good-paying U.S. jobs with minimum wages of at least $20 per hour, with great benefits, retirement plans, career progression opportunities and stock ownership opportunities.”
That all sounds lovely, but the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union isn’t holding its breath that Charter will follow through.
In a statement to Fierce, CWA argued, “Charter has a record of anti-union actions that keep wages low and workers disempowered.” It pointed to Charter’s alleged past efforts to decertify a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) following a strike, though Charter denied it was involved.
“Without collective bargaining rights for workers, a deal like this one will further entrench the power of cable giant Charter to squeeze workers harder,” CWA stated. “Regulators and elected officials should carefully scrutinize this merger and, if it is allowed to move forward, require conditions to protect the public interest and workers' rights.”
Federal regulators are unlikely to advocate for workers' rights, given that U.S. President Donald Trump himself has attempted to roll back union protections for federal workers via an executive order (which was subsequently blocked by a judge).
The upside is that, unlike say, AT&T or Verizon, Charter's workforce has remained relatively stable in recent years. The operator had just over 95,000 employees as of the end of 2019 and 94,500 as of the end of 2024, though there was a bump up to around 101,000 for two years in the interim. That doesn't mean, however, that there won't be a consolidation of roles which leads to layoffs during the integration period.
DEI death knell
There’s also a significant chance that the deal will lead to the demise of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at both companies.
Rolling back such programs now apparently a prerequisite for gaining approval from federal regulators. Just ask T-Mobile and Verizon, both of which recently dropped their DEI policies like a hot potato in order to get their respective deals with Lumos and Frontier through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The implication is that employee resource groups – which many companies have launched to provide career development, networking and support for minority groups – will be on the chopping block in this case as well.
At Charter, at-risk programs might include its Spectrum LGBTQ, Spectrum Multicultural, Spectrum Women and Spectrum Disability resource groups, while Cox could see its Soul, Hola!, Empow[HER], Pride, and DiverseABILITY groups targeted.