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Two recent lawsuits claim AT&T used its relocation policy to force out older employees, with CEO John Stankey favoring younger workers during the rollout.
The lawsuits, one filed in North Carolina in December and another in New Jersey in April, quote CEO John Stankey as saying in 2023 that AT&T needed a younger workforce. Both plaintiffs filed cases with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shortly after leaving the company and said they were recently notified of their right to sue, which they did within 90 days of their respective notices.
In 2023, as other big companies were strengthening return-to-office mandates, the telecom giant said it was calling back some 60,000 managers to the office at nine hub locations across the US. Stankey said at the time that about 9,000 managers would face the decision to relocate or lose their jobs.
The April complaint by former director Lorraine Lopez, who said she worked for 30 years at the telecom giant before she was “surplussed” at age 58, references remarks she recalls Stankey made during a livestreamed companywide meeting on July 26, 2023, about the planned relocation initiative.
“We have a mathematical issue that we have to deal with in our company,” Stankey is quoted as saying. “The profile of our workforce does not match the profile of the population of the United States and the customer base, both in terms of matching it demographically and matching it from an age perspective. We need younger people working at this company.”
He added: “It’s hard to say goodbye to that which we know and really well-trained people who’ve had a lot of experience. It can be emotional. But it’s also a great opportunity for us.”
An AT&T spokesperson said in a statement that the lawsuit was “baseless” and the company would defend itself in court. As of Wednesday morning, AT&T had not yet responded in court filings.
Lopez’s complaint alleges that “AT&T at the highest level openly expressed hostility towards its older employees and its preference for younger employees.” It argues that Lopez’s reassignment from a New Jersey office to an Atlanta hub was unnecessary, and her job duties did not require her to be in that office.
“This employee was not a victim of discrimination; she chose to leave her job because she did not want to relocate with the rest of her team,” the spokesperson said in the statement.
The North Carolina case filed by former employee Kimberly Wall, which is in mediation, said that AT&T discriminated against her on the basis of age, gender, and disability when it denied her requests in 2023 to continue working remotely at her doctor’s recommendation. The complaint also alleged that Stankey said, “We need young people,” in response to the concerns about losing older workers.
Stankey’s July 2023 age-related comments cited in the lawsuits are consistent with what more than half a dozen AT&T employees previously told Business Insider about the meeting. Several of those employees said that town halls held before that meeting were typically recorded and distributed on the corporate intranet, but this one was not released.
His remarks — and others like them in the following months and years — fueled employee concerns that the RTO and relocation mandates were also an effort to reduce head count, especially among longtime employees.
A little over a year after the initial relocation mandate, AT&T instituted a five-day in-office requirement, replacing the previous hybrid model.
Stankey later said in an August 2025 memo that the company was transitioning away from a culture of “loyalty, tenure, and conformance with the associated compensation,” to “a more market-based culture — focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment.”
In later comments about the memo, Stankey told CNBC he aims to be transparent about how he runs the company. He also told The Wall Street Journal that he had been too slow to tackle the “culture evolution” AT&T needed.
Internal numbers previously obtained by Business Insider showed that about half of the 318 managerial workers in one division who received notification to move during the first wave in 2023 declined and left the company.
More broadly, AT&T employed more than 160,000 workers at the start of 2023, according to its annual report. It started this year with about 133,000.
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