Walkout Vowed if Pact Not Reached : PacBell, Union Negotiate as Strike Deadline Looms

Negotiators for Pacific Bell and the major union representing the phone company’s workers in California continued meeting in Oakland on Friday against a strike deadline of midnight tonight when the current three-year contract expires.

Leaders of the Communications Workers of America, which represents more than 41,000 employees at Pacific Bell, have vowed that the union will walk out unless they receive an acceptable offer before that.

“We’re not going to work without a contract like at GTE,” said Dan McCrory, CWA spokesman. The contract covering CWA workers at Thousand Oaks-based GTE California expired March 5, but both sides agreed to extend it indefinitely as long as bargaining progressed, and a settlement was reached July 9 without a strike.

‘Hoping for Settlement’

Although the California CWA locals have authorized a strike, the union’s national president, Morton Bahr, has yet to give his approval for a walkout.

In any case, Pacific Bell’s non-union managers remained on alert to step in immediately if workers leave their jobs, said spokeswoman Kathleen Flynn.

“We’re still hoping we’ll have a settlement agreed to by midnight Saturday but, if not, we expect there to be very little customer impact because managers will cover the critical jobs,” Flynn said. Operating the network is highly automated, she said, while acknowledging that “some delays” might occur in telephone installations if a strike lasts more than a few days.

McCrory said the union also expects that a strike would slow company billing operations, reducing the daily flow of cash to Pacific Bell. Management personnel are unfamiliar with much of the newly installed office automation equipment that now controls billing in most of the state, he said.

As for the negotiations, the major sticking point is the union’s quest for expanded health-care benefits while resisting attempts by the company to shift some of the rising health care costs to workers, McCrory said.

Health and Safety Issues

The CWA also seeks a pay increase going beyond adjustments for inflation, claiming that such a raise is justified by improved worker productivity. But McCrory said the company’s offer, providing no cost-of-living adjustment and calling for what he called health-benefit “give-backs,” would be tantamount to a pay cut. The company has offered a 5% pay increase spread over three years for metropolitan workers and a lower raise for rural workers, he said.

Pay scales for Pacific Bell’s union jobs in the Los Angeles area currently range from $465.50 a week for telephone operators to $654.50 for communications technicians and cable splicers. Under the Pacific Bell proposal, the union said, the pay range after three years would be $488.78 to $687.23.

Other issues concern health and safety, pensions and such “family issues” as child-care facilities.

McCrory acknowledged, however, that one non-economic issue may help shape the saber-rattling context of the current bargaining: the union’s aim of organizing workers among the unregulated subsidiaries of Pacific Bell’s parent, San Francisco-based Pacific Telesis Group. A strike, he reasoned, might scare off would-be union members in the other Pacific Telesis companies.

“But the right to strike is our weapon of last resort,” he added. “This is the most prepared and together we’ve been in years. It’s too hard to get everyone fired up then hold off, so we’ll strike while the iron’s hot. If there’s no contract, we’ll walk at midnight.”

Pacific Bell declined to comment on bargaining issues.

The company had net profit of $1.23 billion on revenue of $8.75 billion last year. It provides telephone service for 9.1 million customers in California, all but 903,000 of them residential. It employs about 62,000 overall.