Essay/Term paper: At&t

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Economics

AT&T


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 tha t 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.