Alcatel-Lucent Workers Fight to Save Plant, Jobs

Alcatel-Lucent Workers Fight to Save Plant, Jobs

by James Parks, Jul 5, 2007

Workers in North Andover, Mass., are joining with elected officials and community supporters to save a major telecom manufacturing plant and its 500 jobs.

Alcatel-Lucent, formerly known as Lucent Technologies, has said it is considering moving most of its North Andover manufacturing operations to Europe, putting more than 500 workers out of work, unless union-represented workers find and agree to accept $6.6 million in cost cuts.

The workers, members of Communications Workers of America (CWA) locals 1365 and 1366, produce network communications equipment to enable companies to transmit data over fiber optic networks. CWA and the locals say the workers also were instrumental in building new demand for a long-distance data transmission system, Lambda Xtreme, a product Lucent was unable to successfully market.

Yet, says Ralph Maly, CWA’s vice president for communications and technology:

The very people who have built and made this company the success it has become over the years are the same people the new anti-union Alcatel-Lucent is discarding and abandoning. The ultimate goal of Alcatel-Lucent is to eliminate as many U.S.-based union jobs as possible.

Maly says union members at the plant made the product lines produced there a success.