Federal mediation between the Communications Workers of America and AT&T is over, but the strike, now nearing a third week, is still on.
Over 17,000 CWA members are on strike across Mississippi and eight other Southeastern states, accusing the company of unfair labor practices for attempting to delay bargaining on a new union contract that would encompass such issues as pay, medical benefits and retirement.
In a statement release Tuesday, CWA accused AT&T of using mediation to stall negotiations.
Local president Jermaine Travis said the end of mediation did not mean the end of negotiations.
“I think it’s important to understand exactly what’s happening at the table right now as it relates to the federal mediator’s role. A federal mediator does not have the authority to force either side one way or the other,” he stated.
While he could not comment directly on the negotiations, he said, “The mediator has not been able to help both sides move this process further along; therefore, the union felt like the mediator wasn’t working for us.”
AT&T put out its own statement, calling the CWA’s decision “unexpected” and expressing its commitment to reaching an agreement.
“As we have said from day 1, we are focused on reaching a fair and competitive agreement that benefits our hard-working employees as quickly as possible, and this won’t change,” the statement read. “In the meantime, we will remain prepared for all contingencies to ensure our customers receive the excellent service they deserve.” Travis said the union was also committed to reaching a fair agreement. “We are still working towards resolving our issues so that we can get our people back to work,” he said.
If you want a good and telling look at the state of college football in 2024, take an in-depth gander at this Saturday night’s game that pits the Mississippi State Bulldogs against the Arizona State Sun Devils at Tempe, Arizona.
The effects of NIL, the transfer portal and conference movement will be fully on display.
The Sun Devils, who have spent the last 45 years playing in the Pacific 12 Conference, now play in the Big 12, which actually has 16 teams, including such natural Arizona State rivals as West Virginia and Central Florida. The Big 12 now spans all four U.S. time zones, which makes as much sense as the new two-minute timeout in college football. (Side note: The NCAA prefers “two-minute timeout” to the NFL’s “two-minute warning.” That’s interesting because two more timeouts of any kind are just what college football did not need. Teams already had three timeouts per half, plus 14 mandated “media timeouts.” So now, we have 28 timeouts total, not counting the stoppages for video replays of close officiating calls. And you wonder why games sometimes last four hours and longer, which means that Saturday night’s game in Tempe could end well after 1 a.m. central time.)
Rick Cleveland
Arizona State’s quarterback is Sam Leavitt, who hails from Oregon, but played last season at Michigan State. Transferring is nothing new for Leavitt, who played at three Oregon high schools before signing with Michigan State, where he played in four games as a freshman. Leavitt won the battle with Jaden Rashada to be the Sun Devils’ starter. As soon as Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham named Leavitt the starter, Rashada did what seemingly any college quarterback not named Arch Manning would do in that situation. That is, he put his name in the transfer portal. He now resides in Athens, Georgia, and will play – or ride the bench – for you know who.
Mississippi State starting quarterback Blake Shapen also comes directly from the transfer portal. Shapen, a senior, has played the last three years at Baylor, where he was consistently good and often outstanding. If State’s dismantling of overmatched Eastern Kentucky was any indication, Shapen fits nicely into new head coach Jeff Lebby’s high-speed offensive scheme.
It certainly would have helped Shapen if, on occasion, he could turn and hand the ball to Woody Marks, the Bulldogs’ leading rusher last year. But no, Marks now plays at Southern Cal, where he rushed for two touchdowns, including the game-winner in the Trojans’ opening week victory over LSU in Las Vegas. Will Rogers, State’s leading passer last season, now throws his touchdowns for Washington. Zavion Thomas, one of State’s leading receivers last year, now plays for LSU. Teammates last year, Marks and Thomas played against one another for different teams last week. Crazy, no? Fruit basket turnover doesn’t even begin to describe it.
As is the case all over college football, State and Arizona State fans will need to purchase a game program in these early season games. So many of the players on both sides are new, including eight of the Bulldogs’ 11 offensive starters. State’s defense features six new starters. State’s new players include transfers from all over the land. One sample: Kevin Coleman Jr., who caught five passes for 88 yards and a touchdown last week, began his college career at Jackson State where he was the SWAC freshman of the year in 2022, before heading to Louisville where he was an 11-game starter last year. Playing for his third team in three seasons, Coleman also returned five punts for 117 yards against Eastern Kentucky. He is one of only eight Division I players to record over 200 all-purpose yards last week.
State also will feature new starters from Memphis, Texas Tech, North Texas, LSU, North Carolina, Purdue, Hinds Community College, South Carolina and Alabama. No, I wasn’t kidding when I said you need a program.
Branden Jennings, a Bulldogs starter at outside linebacker, is as well-travelled as any. The Jacksonville, Florida, native was a part-time starter as a freshman at Maryland, then transferred from there to Central Florida and from there to Hinds. Presumably, Jennings has found a more permanent home in Starkville, although nothing is certain in college football these days. At his fourth college in four years, he still has a year of eligibility remaining after this one.
Arizona State’s roster is just as nomadic. The Sun Devils’ projected starters included eight players new to the roster. What’s more, 13 of the 22 back-ups are new players. These days in college football, it’s entirely possible to give it the “old college try” at five different colleges.
After Arizona State’s 49-7 unexpected trouncing of Wyoming Saturday night, Dillingham was asked if he thought his team had been overlooked and underranked by preseason prognosticators. “Nope,” he answered. “We’ve won three games the past two years and recruited a bunch of players nobody else wanted. We’re right where we should be.”
That could be. We’ll learn more late, late Saturday night. What we know for sure: In 2024, Mississippi State and Arizona State are college football in a nutshell. It reminds me of a game we played inside at Vacation Bible School when we would have rather been outside playing football. The game was called musical chairs. There were no two-minute warnings.
The Clevelands review the first big weekend of college football and look forward to the second weekend, headlined by the Mississippi State visit to Arizona State. Brandt, one of the Associated Press’s two national Major League Baseball writers, covered the Sun Devils’ impressive opening victory over Wyoming.
Kyle Wallace sat in the audience with his hand raised earlier this month so he could speak during an open discussion at the Mississippi Public Service Commission’s Solar Summit.
Wallace, an executive with the New Orleans-based rooftop solar developer, PosiGen, wanted to share information about solar energy with the relatively fresh-faced regulators. All three said earlier in the day they had many questions about how the renewable fuel would fit in in Mississippi, which still gets most of its electricity from fossil fuels.
But after another speaker, Brent Bailey, a former Republican Public Service Commissioner who advocated for clean energy and who now works for a local solar and energy efficiency company spoke, the commissioners cut off comments from that side of the room — abruptly ending the chance for any solar advocate or industry representative to speak.
“We want to hear from people who are not selling solar panels,” said De’Keither Stamps, a Democrat and a former state lawmaker who was elected to the commission last year.
Mississippi Public Service Central District Commissioner De’Keither Stamps, discusses current agency operations across the state during an interview at district headquarters, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Chairman Chris Brown backed him up.
“We’re turning into an infomercial,” said Brown, a Republican who also was elected to the three-member PSC last year after serving in the state House of Representatives.
Said Wallace: “We were sitting there in the audience thinking, ‘We have answers to these (questions); these are not new questions.’ We want to be able to address them, but we just weren’t provided the opportunity.”
In fact, the agenda for the Aug. 15 meeting included no one from the solar or clean energy industry. Serving in the role as an expert at the summit was a representative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank funded by the oil and gas industry that is adept at spreading its anti-renewable agenda nationwide.
Stamps later defended shutting down the pro-solar voices at the summit: “It was a question-and-answer period,” he told Floodlight. “It wasn’t a ‘give-your-speech’ period.”
Keeping clean energy advocates out of the conversation is just one of a series of tactics the commission has used to discourage solar development in the Magnolia State. Earlier this year, the commission halted rules that would have made rooftop solar more affordable for homeowners and institutions including schools.
The Aug. 15 discussion comes at a time when climate change is approaching a tipping point, and the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has rolled out billions in tax breaks for clean energy to cut economy-wide carbon emissions 40% by 2030.
Lots of sun — but little solar
Mississippi is the 13th sunniest state in the United States. But when it comes to solar, the state ranks 37 out of 50, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, an industry trade group.
Mississippi’s neighbors in the South aren’t faring much better. Alabama ranks 32; Arkansas, 27; Louisiana is at 36, and Tennessee, 30. All figures are according to SEIA.
Wallace said the PSC staff member who was handing a microphone to audience members stopped walking toward where he and other environmental advocates were sitting. They all put their hands down.
He said members of the solar industry had been reaching out to the commissioners all year to help them understand the industry and the impacts of their policymaking on the future of solar in the state.
“It was disappointing,” Wallace said in an interview with Floodlight. “We had hoped that it would be more of an opportunity to have a dialogue and really engage. It obviously did not turn out that way.”
Policy expert is fossil fuel lobbyist
Those invited to speak were executives from the politically influential Mississippi Power Co., the Tennessee Valley Authority, the state’s agriculture and commerce commissioner and Brent Bennett, a policy director from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Bennett noted that most new power generation is coming from wind and solar. He said that correlates with higher electrical prices in California and Texas, where adoption of renewables has been higher than most states.
“For anyone that’s wanting to add more wind and solar to their resource mix, I think there’s a burden of proof there to show that, ‘OK, well, if you’re going to do that, how are you going to keep costs down?’ ” he said.
But pieces of that puzzle have been studied. A December 2023 report from the consulting firm Ernst & Young found the cost of producing and moving solar electricity over the life of the panels is roughly 29% lower than the cheapest fossil fuel.
Bennett’s track record for creating barriers to renewable energy can be seen in a sweeping energy law the Texas Legislature passed in 2023. According to the Guardian, Bennett edited several amendments to the bill, which doles out incentives for new plants that burn natural gas, also known as methane.
The edits included adding new transmission costs on renewables as well as a requirement that developers ensure wind and solar — intermittent sources of electricity — have access to backup power from fossil fuels, according to the Guardian.
Earlier this year, Mississippi State University installed a 3,420-panel solar installation on its campus in Starkville. It is the largest solar array on a Southeastern Conference university campus and is set to produce about 2.4 million kilowatt hours of energy a year. Credit: Ivy Rose Ball / The Reflector
Monika Gerhart, executive director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, said a lot of the information shared at the meeting “raised some real red flags.”
She added, “Everyone wants progress in innovation, and I’m not sure this summit was designed to meet those needs.”
Stamps said the meeting was a first step and wasn’t set up, “to solve all of the problems in one day.”
“It was just the start of the discussion, build some relationships, people can see people,” he said in an interview with Floodlight. “The anti people can come and be in the same room as the pro people … just put everybody in the same room together.”
When asked to respond to his comment regarding a desire to hear from people who weren’t selling solar panels, Stamps said that he’s allowed Bailey — his opponent in two previous PSC elections — and others from the industry to speak about solar on other occasions.
Solar faces political winds
Roughly 20 solar companies are based in Mississippi. The bulk of the solar installations there are in large — or so-called utility-scale — projects. Electric utilities prefer these projects for two reasons: they operate similar to existing power plants, and they can own them, which beefs up their bottom line.
On the flip side, these utilities are resistant — or even take steps to block — customers using rooftop solar because it is disruptive to the industry’s business model. The companies typically use an argument known as “cost shifting,” saying that rooftop solar customers depend less on the power grid, thus driving up the costs that others have to pay for that infrastructure.
Indeed, solar on homes and businesses in Mississippi barely shows up on a SEIA graphic of annual solar installations.
Protesters against the building of a solar farm in their area gathered outside the Chancery Court building, Monday, June 17, 2024. The Hinds County Board of Supervisors voted 3 – 2 in favor of the solar farm. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
In 2015, the Mississippi PSC adopted a rooftop solar policy to make it more affordable for residents and small businesses. The rule was a top priority of then-veteran regulator Brandon Presley, a widely popular Democrat who ran unsuccessfully to unseat Republican Gov. Tate Reeves last year.
Presley, who also authored the PSC’s policy to boost energy efficiency, was behind a revamped rule in 2022 that offered rebates for home solar systems for low-income households as well as increased the amount they would receive for selling excess electricity back to the grid.
The new rule also created incentives for schools to install rooftop solar to decrease their annual energy expenses.
But the commission gutted that policy earlier this year, arguing that incentives through the IRA’s Solar for All program, administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, would make it easier for low-income residents to put solar on their roofs. The 2-1 vote happened without public notice or an opportunity to comment on the issue beforehand.
The Sierra Club, whose lobbyists are active in fighting anti-renewable energy policies at the PSC and at the Mississippi statehouse, sued the PSC in May, arguing the action should be rescinded because of the lack of notice.
The Mississippi Public Service Commission held a summit on solar energy Aug. 15, 2024 but invited no representatives of the solar industry or renewable energy advocates. The commissioners are, from left, De’Keither Stamps, Chris Brown and Wayne Carr. Credit: Mississippi Public Service Commission Facebook pag
During the summit, Gerhart was among the attendees who pointed out that regulators did not use the full hour-long time block allotted for discussion. The summit was running ahead of schedule, a rarity in any state utility regulatory meeting, so there could have been even more time to hear from members of the audience.
“So most of the industry folks who actually have valuable and factual information to share have sat here all day waiting for this public comment,” she told Floodlight. “They said that they didn’t want to hear from the industry, and then they shut it down.” Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
Since his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pushed to have his name removed from the ballot in swing states — even suing North Carolina to try to force removal.
But his team in Mississippi is still working to get him on the ballot here.
On Friday, ahead of a Sept. 6 deadline, Kennedy’s campaign filed paperwork, including 1,000 registered voter signatures, to put Kennedy on the Nov. 5 ballot as an independent candidate in the Magnolia State. The ballot is still pending approval of candidates and their paperwork by the Mississippi State Board of Election Commissioners — comprised of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
The deadline for the secretary of state to publish a sample ballot for Mississippi is Sept. 11.
The Kennedy campaign contact did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Kennedy earlier this year was fighting legal hurdles that would have prevented him from being on the ballot in several states. Since his withdrawal from the race, he said he would push to have his name removed from the ballot in swing states, fearing he would be a “spoiler” that could hurt Trump and saying, “I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues.”
Kennedy’s team has said it’s not concerned about him staying on the ballot in predominantly blue states, where he’s unlikely to hurt Trump’s performance. It’s unclear what the strategy would be for him being on the ballot in reliably red Mississippi.
Kennedy sued North Carolina’s election board on Friday, after it denied his request to remove his name. He’s also pushing to be removed from the ballot in the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
In June, Kennedy’s campaign issued a press release saying it had completed paperwork and other requirements to get on the ballot in Mississippi. But the secretary of state’s office at the time responded that his paperwork had not been completed at that time.
The Mississippi State Department of Health will get nearly $4 million from the federal government to implement a home-visitation program for families in 16 counties with children up to five years of age.
Families that choose to participate in the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visitation, or MIECHV, program can take advantage of free support from trained professionals including social workers and educators in areas such as breastfeeding, safe sleep for infants, and practices for language development.
The program uses a decades-old, evidence-based model called Parents as Teachers that focuses on educating parents in early childhood development, learning and health.
Professionals will also connect families to community resources such as affordable childcare and will conduct screenings for postpartum health – both physical and mental.
“MSDH is thrilled to receive this funding from HRSA that will focus on our children, zero to five, and families in their home settings,” AnnaLyn Whitt, director of health services at the state department of health, told Mississippi Today. “ … The counties were selected based on a needs assessment process that looked at access, social determinants of health and child health outcomes.”
Across the country, states have gotten $440 million to implement similar home visitation programs. The initiative is part of a larger effort by the Biden administration, which has spent more than $558 million addressing America’s maternal health crisis – in which women are dying at a higher rate than any other developed nation.
Mississippi continues to rank last in women’s health and reproductive care outcomes, and mental health is one of the leading causes of preventable maternal deaths, according to the latest Mississippi maternal mortality report.
Experts hope that making trained professionals available for home visits free of charge to parents will help mitigate these statistics in a holistic approach that also contributes to child success in school and beyond.
“Bringing home a baby can be stressful. Many new parents face additional challenges such as housing, or income insecurity, which can make the whole situation even more daunting,” Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services secretary, said in a press release. “But we know from decades of research that home visits work – from helping with school readiness and achievement for children to improving health for women.”
While registration is not yet open, interested parents can reach out to state health department officials here to learn more.
Mississippi has the lowest labor force participation rate in the nation, and it’s impacting women and their families.
A recent report by the nonprofit Empower Mississippi found the state’s labor force participation rate – the percentage of working-age people who have jobs or are looking for jobs – is 53.9%. This is despite record economic growth and low unemployment.
The report found that the most important factors in labor force participation were education, age, gender and race.
Men have a higher labor force participation rate than women, 59.8% and 48.5%, respectively. This is despite there being more working-age women than men, and women’s and men’s labor force participation rates declining at similar levels.
Matt Williams from the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative said the lack of affordable child care, lack of time and money for education and training, and low wages are barriers for women in the workforce.
With Mississippi having the nation’s highest number of single mom-headed households – 42% with 80% of them led by single moms – .Williams also emphasized the importance of policies that uplifted single mothers economically.
“What’s not happening is we’re not connecting families headed by moms to higher wage work,” he said.
But the Empower report’s focus on gender as a factor in the state’s low labor participation rate needs context, he said..
“…When we look at labor force participation for moms, for women with children in Mississippi, what we see is that it is really high relative to other categories and subcategories of the population,” he said.
Mississippi mothers with children ages 5 to 14 had a labor force participation rate of just over 77%. For mothers with kids under 14, it is 73%. Two-thirds of those women are married. For childless women, it is 68.5%.
State Economist Corey Miller. Miller said low educational attainment at high school and college levels and high rates of disability and incarceration also are major issues with labor force participation.
Empower Mississippi commissioned the National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center to conduct the quantitative research, which interviewed over 50 stakeholders, including legislators, professors and business leaders.
Miller was one of those interviewed. Like Williams, he said the lack of affordable childcare is a major issue for women in and out of the workforce. Another big overall challenge, he said, is bringing in companies that can bring jobs to the state.
“You kind of get a chicken and egg problem,” he said. “Can you get companies that want to hire college-educated workers to come to the state if you don’t have a big enough population of that? But at the same time, if you get a population educated with college degrees, how do you get them to stay in the state if they don’t have the job opportunities that they’re looking for?”
He believes having more remote work opportunities could be a solution. “It has the potential to increase labor force participation because it allows more flexibility, particularly for women who may have children at home,” he said.
He also pointed out the work being done to improve training and education such as AccelerateMS and the state’s workforce development agency.
Rebekah Staples, a fellow at Empower Mississippi, said this report was the first. An interim report is coming out next year that looks deeper into the issues raised in the first.
“The end goal is to be helpful and study the issues that policymakers want to look at so that perhaps they can use some of this data to act on,” she said.
In June, Lt. Gov. Hosemann announced the establishment of two Senate study committees. The Labor Force Participation Study Group is looking at why the labor force participation rate is so low. The Study Group on Women, Children, and Families, originally created in 2022, will address problems like women’s healthcare, access to childcare, the foster care system and more.
In a statement, Hosemann expects Empower Mississippi to testify for the Labor Force Participation Study Group, and said that the data would intersect with the other study group.
“When labor force participation increases, the entire state wins — we are more stable, healthier, and more likely to contribute to our families and communities. Supporting women who may need help with issues like childcare in order to go to school or get a job is critical to these efforts,” he said.
Comments and recommendations for the study groups can be sent to LaborStudyGroup@senate.ms.gov and WCPStudyGroup@senate.ms.gov. Empower Mississippi is taking comments about it’s report at research@empowerms.org.
