Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 11, 1995 TAG: 9508110045
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
``A strike is a very real possibility,'' said Vincent Maisano, vice president of the Communications Workers of America's 13th District.
Meanwhile, the only other regional phone company with expired union contracts - Ameritech - reached an agreement with the CWA providing a 10.9 percent pay increase over three years and pension increases of 10 to 15 percent for future retirees, union and company officials said.
Bell Atlantic workers have the right to strike at any time, because they are not operating under a formal contract extension, which would require 24 hours' notice, Maisano said.
In the event of a strike, Bell Atlantic said it would use 20,000 managers to maintain service.
Bell Atlantic spokesman Eric Rabe blamed the union for the lack of progress. ``We've been doing absolutely everything we can to move this bargaining forward,'' he said.
But the union's Maisano said Bell Atlantic's negotiators are ``behaving as if they don't want a settlement any time soon.''
Both sides said they would like to avoid a strike.
To pressure Bell Atlantic at the bargaining table, union officials said they are prepared to implement plans that would cut into the company's revenues.
For example, union officials said they have 10,000 cards gathered from customers sympathetic to the union requesting that services such as call waiting be terminated. The union is holding the cards to turn in if needed.
If all cards were turned in, they would amount to ``potentially millions of dollars'' in lost revenue, Maisano said.
Bell Atlantic has been talking with union officials since strike deadlines passed Saturday. Three other regional phone companies - BellSouth Corp., Pacific Telesis and Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. - whose contracts expired at the same time worked out new agreements.
In Chicago, Ameritech and the unions, reporting what both sides called significant progress, agreed to stop the clock and continued negotiating past the Wednesday midnight deadline.
``There's so much complex stuff to work out in the final hours, but we believe we're on our way to avoiding a strike,'' said Tom Hopper of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
``We're cautiously optimistic we can reach an agreement without work stoppage,'' Ameritech spokesman Mike Brand said.
At issue in all the talks were wages, union members' access to new jobs within the companies, guarantees that those new jobs would be covered by the union, the use of subcontractors and the shifting of health care costs.
Bell Atlantic has 37,000 workers who are CWA members. It operates in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Washington, D.C. It serves about 12 million customers.
The CWA contract covers 6,650 Bell Atlantic workers in Virginia; because Virginia is a right-to-work state, however, not all of those workers are union members. CWA Local 2204, based in Roanoke, covers 875 Bell Atlantic workers in Southwest Virginia from Roanoke to Cumberland Gap.
``It's looking more and more like a strike,'' Larry Akers, president of Local 2204, said Thursday. ``The company is just not forthcoming at the [bargaining] table.''
Akers said that if a strike does happen, he doesn't expect it before late this weekend.
Bell Atlantic has been using subcommittees, whose company participants have no authority to make decisions, to delay the talks, Akers said. The national union leadership believes it will take months to arrive at an agreement at the rate the talks have been moving, he said.
But Bell Atlantic spokesman Paul Miller in Richmond said it's the union that's been stalling. ``Every action they've taken to date is a stall tactic; we have no idea why they're stalling,'' Miller said.
As an example, Miller said the company made a new offer to the union Saturday and it took the CWA two days to respond; when it did respond, it restated its previous demands. In another instance, two crucial bargaining subcommittees met Wednesday, but the union insisted the issues they were discussing be referred to the full bargaining committee, he said.
The company has shown willingness to compromise on its side, Miller said. ``We're willing to bargain in good faith and move the process along,'' he said.
Akers should ask his union why the two sides are still far apart, Miller said.
Employment security and retiree health care are the two big issues holding up a new contract, Akers said.
``Retirees have never paid for health care, and we don't intend to let them start paying for it now,'' he said, noting that the issue is a perennial one. ``Retirees helped build the company.''
Regarding job security, Akers said Bell Atlantic doesn't want to give union members transfer rights to company subsidiaries, and he suspects management just doesn't want union members in those jobs. Although not all still are operating, the company has created 110 subsidiaries in eight years and has used phone company profits to enter such businesses as real estate and airplane leasing, Akers said.
Miller, contacted Thursday evening, said he couldn't immediately confirm the number of company subsidiaries.
CWA released a report Thursday alleging that cutbacks in Bell Atlantic's work force over the past several years have left customers with poor service and the company with a $1.4 billion profit. Rabe called the allegations ``ridiculous'' and called the report a ploy to influence bargaining.
Staff writer Greg Edwards contributed to this story.
by CNB