Dallas-based AT&T has committed to bringing 3,000 jobs back to the U.S. as part of a four-year deal with a union that covers thousands of workers in Texas and four other southwestern states.

The Communications Workers of America and AT&T announced Thursday that they have agreed on a tentative contract that would increase pay and provide paid parental leave, health care and other benefits for about 20,000 AT&T workers in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. The deal will go to union members for a vote.

The employees covered by the contract are call center workers, technicians who install U-verse and others who work in AT&T's wired cable, internet and telephone businesses, said Claude Cummings Jr., vice president of District 6 of the CWA,

When bargaining began last fall, Cummings said he made it clear he wouldn't sign an agreement unless it brought back some U.S. jobs. He said he's see more and more jobs in his region leave the country. He said he expects most of the 3,000 jobs to be at call centers, which have lost the most jobs.

Marty Richter, an AT&T spokesman, said the company's promise to bring jobs back is "not a typical part of a labor agreement."

"It's an example of what can be achieved when the sides work together and we appreciate the work of the CWA's Southwest leadership team to make this possible," he said in email.

Contract negotiations came to an end about a month before the previous contract expired.

AT&T's promise to bring back some offshore jobs comes at a time when President Donald Trump is rallying against sending jobs to other countries. In speeches and on Twitter, President Donald Trump has criticized companies including Carrier, Apple and Ford for the practice.

The 700,000-member CWA endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for president and later Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election. Now, it's in the usual position of watching a Republican president rally around a cause touted by the union.

But Cummings said he'd like to see Trump go further. "He's on the right track, but it can't just be about bringing jobs back," he said. "It's got to be about livable wages and benefits."

AT&T is still taking heat about offshoring from employees who are part of two other CWA bargaining efforts. They are negotiating contracts that cover 38,000 people -- 21,000 wireless workers nationwide and 17,000 phone, cable and internet workers in California and Nevada.

Union workers have rallied outside of retail stores and call centers during the negotiations and called on AT&T to stop sending call center jobs to other countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines. They've also protested outsourcing store operations to third party dealers. They recently voted to authorize a strike.

Richter said AT&T has one of the largest number of full-time, union-represented employees in the U.S. It hired about 20,000 people into union-represented jobs in 2016 and is looking to fill over 4,200 more of them, he said.

In 2016 and 2017, he said AT&T reached 19 different labor agreements that cover over 81,000 employees.