About 17,000 AT&T workers represented by the Communications Workers of America went on strike across the Southeast on Friday afternoon, including employees in Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile.

A letter dated Friday to AT&T Southeast local presidents said CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. approved an unfair labor practices strike against the telecom, following a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board. The union accuses AT&T of “surface bargaining” in its latest round of contract talks with three CWA units. Surface bargaining is a term for sending representatives to the table without an intention of making progress.

The CWA’s previous five-year contract with AT&T expired on Aug. 4, said Mustafa Hassan, president of CWA Local 3905 in Huntsville, with over 250 organized workers.

“We’re always prepared for something like this, but we were hoping we didn’t have to cross this road,” he said. “It just got to the point there was really no movement.”

Since the last contract was ratified in 2019, the nation has experienced the coronavirus pandemic and soaring inflation, pushing up the cost of everything from groceries to housing. The union is seeking wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments, along with increased job security for workers.

“Here you have AT&T, a multibillion-dollar corporation, and they often brag and boast about the profits they make in the media and to their shareholders, and we feel like … what we’re asking for is nothing unreasonable,” Hassan said.

The strike involves technicians, customer service representatives and others who install, maintain, and support AT&T’s residential and business network in Alabama and eight other states in the Southeast, according to CWA.

Across Alabama, the union also represents workers in Anniston, Gadsden, Jasper, Montgomery, Ashland, Sheffield and Tuscaloosa. The striking bargaining units are AT&T Southeast, AT&T Utility Operations and AT&T Billing.

AT&T recently reached a tentative bargaining agreement with the CWA’s western units, but the southeastern units are under a separate contract, a CWA spokesperson told AL.com.

“If this is happening here in a union environment, others should be looking at this – maybe people on a job who haven’t gotten a raise for years or they feel like they’re overworked and underpaid, they can relate to something like what we’re going through,” Hassan said.