By Arselia Gales

AT&T workers in California and Nevada rejected a three-year contract that would have included higher wages for 17,000 company employees.

AT&T has been in negotiations with the Communications Workers of America District 9 for almost a year and says it will continue to work on reaching an agreement. Leadership from the two sides came to an agreement earlier this month, but it failed to get enough votes from the union membership.

The carrier has similar contracts that were ratified in AT&T’s Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest regions that covered approximately 60,000 wireline employees.

It was unfortunate that the very fair and reasonable contract was not ratified,” AT&T said in a statement, according to a Fox Business article.

The CWA said the final round of bargaining with AT&T was agonizing and that the discussions were angry. Although CWA District 9’s vice president asked workers to ratify the agreement, their elected bargaining committee wouldn’t recommend the agreement.

No stone has been left unturned, no argument has been untried and for the first time in our bargaining history in this unit we have had to utilize the assistance of a federal mediator to bring these negotiations to a close,” CWA said last month.