Economics Of At&t Essay, Research Paper

The AT+T Corporation, formerly known as The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was incorporated on March 3, 1885 in New York as a wholly owned subsidiary of The American Bell Telephone Company. Its original purpose was to manage and expand the burgeoning toll (long distance) business of American Bell and its licensees. It continued as the long distance company until December 30, 1899 when it assumed the business and property of American Bell and became the parent company of the Bell System. For most of its history, the company functioned as a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly. No competition was apparent until the 1970’s. Since the break up in 1984, AT+T has become the largest telecommunications company in the United States, and a world wide leader in communications services. Its main businesses include long distance services, AT+T Wireless Services, AT+T World Net services, AT+T Solutions consulting services and the AT+T Universal Card. AT+T has a very strong global presence that dates back to 1882 when it opened a plant in Antwerp ,Belgium. AT+T has approximately 51,000 employees based outside of the United States.In 1994, International revenues alone were 25 percent. You can see why AT+T has a presence in nearly 100 countries around the world, and does business in about 200 countries. In the last fifteen months AT+T has split into three separate companies. They are AT+T, a global communications company; Lucent Technologies, a technological company; NCR Corporation, a computer company. The new AT+T is committed to making the most of its leadership position in the dynamic global market for communications and information services. With 2.3 million share owners, AT+T is the most widely held stock in the United States.

AT+T has an Environmental Responsibility and they follow through on it. They take precautions and do not want to mess up the environment any more than it has already been. AT+T’s strong commitment to have good environmental performance has to start with environmental goals that call for phaseout of CFC emissions from manufacturing operations. Also, they would like to eliminate reportable toxic air emissions. They have already increased recycling of waste paper and in the use of paper. Their progress is a key to their responsibility. The figures I found are as follows. The factories have virtually eliminated all CFC emissions. They have reduced reportable toxic air emissions by 92 percent. Also, they have reduced manufacturing waste by 49 percent. The company is recycling 63 percent of its wastepaper that computes to forty-eight billion pounds annually and has increased its use of recycled paper significantly. It has been reducing paper consumption by 25 percent since 1990.

AT+T is also responsible for their employees’ conditions in the workplace. In reviewing information about the company, I feel they do an excellent job. They provide something called E,H&S. This is an Environment, Health & Safety organization dedicated to creating a safe and healthy workplace for the employees of AT+T. This is supporting the business, protecting the environment and maintaining AT+T’s strong reputation as one of the top corporate environmental champions.

E,H&S is currently working to provide guidance regarding compliance with regulatory policies world wide. Also they commit resources to legislative and regulatory analysis activities and performance monitoring which is how they evaluate the persons overall work presense,attitude, self ateem and overall performance. Finally they implement an environmental management system based on ISO 14001 principles that are the global environmental management systems standards.

One other interesting area of AT+T is their Social Responsibility. They are mediocre with this. I feel they lay off too many people. They think profit before they think about what the effect will be on their employees. When AT+T announced in January of this year that it would be laying-off 40,000 workers or 13 percent of its workforce, people began to say that AT+T was another example of Corporational Greed. This is a failure of the social responsibility by the corporation. The flip side to the down sizing is that the new competitors have job openings for the people who have been layed-off. AT+T has also offered packages such as one years salary if they would leave so that they were protecting their employees for at least a year. This compensation package depended upon your seniority. What I do feel is right is that they want to be involved with the community. They have the AT&T Foundation that supports projects in education, health, social action and the arts. They also care about the employees. They have work and family programs that they fund. These include child care and elder care that both have been commended by the United States Department of Labor. One last program is the Total Life Concept Program which addresses employee health, nutrition and stress management. AT+T is committed to the development and growth of its employees. That is why they want to build their employees capabilities so they can connect with the future. Environmental and social responsibilities are traditions that have been embedded to the company since the very first day. AT+T wants to keep up on the modernizing and look toward the future. If they continue to keep on making the advances that they are, they will be by far the strongest company in America. Their downfall will be there downsizing. To gain respect of their employees and their customers, they will need to remain as is.