BATON ROUGE — Phone service company AT&T released a statement Thursday morning saying it has made a "strong final offer" to the Communications Workers of America southeast union in a bid to end a three-week long strike. The CWA called it "bad faith bargaining."

In a letter sent to employees, AT&T promised employees "substantial annual wage increases," increased health benefits, retirement benefits, and more regulations on working hours for wire technicians. 

"We ask employees in the Southeast to carefully consider this offer and urge CWA leadership to give them the chance to vote on it, so their voice can be heard," AT&T said. 

The CWA responded publicly Thursday morning saying the message sent out was "misleading" and that the company had not mentioned healthcare prior to the offer made Wednesday night.

"Health care is a critical issue for our members. For weeks, the company refused to provide us with information that is necessary for us to be able to assess costs and develop our own proposals," the union said. "Their failure to provide that information was part of the unfair labor practice charges that we filed last month that led to the current strike. They also reneged on an agreement to use regional instead of national costs when determining premiums, which is also one of our ULP charges."

For more information on the proposed final offer, visit AT&T's website here. You can read CWA's response here.