
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 8, 1995                   TAG: 9508080078
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

1 PHONE STRIKE AVOIDED

Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. reached an agreement Monday with the union representing most of its employees, a union official said, becoming the first of five regional Bell companies with negotiations under way to settle.

The agreement includes an 11 percent average wage increase during the three-year contract and a reduction in employees' health care costs, said Vic Crawley, vice president of the Communications Workers of America's 6th District. It also includes a new security clause giving telephone workers - if laid off - a chance to move to other subsidiaries of Southwestern Bell's parent company, SBC Communications Inc., Crawley said.

``It appears to be a settlement that meets all of our goals,'' said CWA spokesman Jeffrey Miller.

Those goals, he said, are protecting union jobs as phone companies under deregulation expand into new businesses, protecting paid health benefits for retirees and increasing pension benefits.

Southwestern Bell provides local phone service to Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas. It has 37,000 CWA workers in those states and more than 10 million business and residential customers.

Midnight strike deadlines passed Saturday as company and CWA negotiators from coast-to-coast extended their talks. Regional union officials negotiated separately with each company: Bell Atlantic, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, BellSouth and Southwestern Bell.

Miller said the union agreed to temporary contract extensions of one type or another with all but Bell Atlantic, which refused a formal extension.

Bell Atlantic, which serves most of Virginia, didn't expect an agreement any time soon, spokesman Eric Rabe said Monday.

``We're not very close to working anything out here,'' Rabe said. Citing the prospects for even more competition through congressional deregulation of the industry, he said, ``We at Bell Atlantic need to negotiate harder this year because the situation is changing so much with the competitive environment.''

The company has 37,000 workers who are CWA members, he said. The company operates in Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

Officials from Pacific Telesis, which has 34,000 CWA workers in California and Nevada, said Monday that talks were progressing.

``Both sides are hoping they'll reach an agreement soon, said Craig Watts, a spokesman for Pacific Bell, the phone component of Pacific Telesis, a holding company. The company late Sunday reached an agreement on health care costs. It is still negotiating the issues of job security and wages.

The companies said they would use managers to maintain service if a strike were called.

At issue in all the negotiations, Miller said, was union members' access to new jobs within the companies, guarantees that those new jobs would be covered by the union, wages, the use of subcontractors and shifting health care costs.

by CNB