About two years after Dallas-based AT&T championed corporate tax cuts and pledged they'd lead to job creation, the company plans to cut nearly 2,000 jobs, according to the telecom union that represents its workers.

Officials from Communications Workers of America say AT&T began notifying employees Thursday about the upcoming cuts. It will eliminate 1,880 jobs by the end of September in 23 states, including Texas and Oklahoma, the union said. The cuts are aimed at technicians, such as those who do home installations or lay fiber optic cable.

About 400 of those jobs are in Texas, CWA communications director Beth Allen said.

AT&T spokesman Marty Richter confirmed that jobs will be eliminated but would not say how many.

"Due to changes as our business and industry continue to evolve, we are making some staff reductions involving technicians who install and repair certain services and network systems," he said in an email.

The legacy telecom company is going through a significant transformation as it becomes a media behemoth. A year ago, AT&T acquired Time Warner (now called WarnerMedia) and became owner of some of the most valuable entertainment brands, including HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. The deal was valued at $108.7 billion, including debt.

AT&T — the country's largest pay-TV provider and its second largest wireless carrier —is now juggling numerous corporate challenges. Among them, it must pay down billions of dollars in debt, stem the decline of cable and satellite TV customers and compete with new players like Netflix and Hulu. And it must do all that while proving itself to Wall Street and paying dividends to shareholders. The company is also preparing to debut its own Netflix-like streaming service, which will showcase HBO content, later this year.

But CWA, which represents about 90,000 AT&T employees, said AT&T has broken its promise to create jobs with the billions it has saved.

AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson was one of the biggest cheerleaders for federal tax reform. Stephenson hosted a town hall at AT&T's Dallas headquarters where he encouraged an auditorium packed with employees to call their Congress members.

Stephenson said the tax cuts would allow AT&T to step up its investment and fuel new jobs. For each billion it invested, he said it would create 7,000 "hard-hat jobs" for people, such as those who put fiber optic cable in the ground or build cell towers.

President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in December 2017. It slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Allen said those jobs at AT&T have not materialized. "We see no evidence that they are creating a lot of new jobs from their investments," she said. "Instead, we see stock buybacks and other things going on that don’t directly benefit our communities."

AT&T's headcount has been shrinking for the past three years. It had 281,450 employees in 2015, according to its annual report. By the end of 2017, the company's headcount had declined by nearly 10 percent to 254,000 employees.

Richter said technology is driving changes in AT&T's workforce and squeezing some of its businesses. He pointed to the sharp decline of TV subscribers as more people switch to less expensive streaming services.

But he said AT&T will "continue to hire in areas where we're seeing increasing demand for products and services." He said the company hired more than 3,000 people in Texas in 2018 and more than 1,200 so far this year.

Richter said AT&T will offer most affected employees a similar job. But Allen said those other jobs may involve a demotion, pay cut or a transfer to another location.