It’s a Wild, Wireless World : Telecom Workers Search for Niches in a Changing Environment

WASHINGTON —  When Bell Atlantic and Nynex combined their cellular telephone operations last summer, company recruiters scrambled to hire 1,500 workers to handle mobile phone customers who were materializing at the rate of 10 every minute.

But earlier this year, when the same two companies announced they planned to merge their overall phone businesses, the employment news wasn’t so rosy. Company executives said privately that they expected to trim the payroll, and many analysts predicted that the final body count could top 3,000.

Welcome to the schizophrenic telephone business, where a combination of merger mania and increased competition is creating painful downsizing among operators of old wired telephone networks even as their wireless cousins are enjoying skyrocketing growth.

While the Baby Bells and the major long-distance carriers have cut more than 75,000 jobs in the last two years, the wireless industry added more than 30,000 jobs in the same period, nearly doubling its employment rolls.

The telecommunications sector thus illustrates the Darwinian struggle that is happening throughout the job market as workers scramble to find new niches in a fast-changing environment.

The fittest are surviving by adapting their talents to the needs of the growing side of the industry. Bell Atlantic manager Mark Emery, for example, left a comfortable management job at Bell Atlantic four years ago to launch an operations department for the hugely successful wireless start-up firm American Personal Communications in Washington, D.C.

But with more jobs disappearing than emerging in the short term, only the strong survive. And union officials say that most traditional telephone company workers are discouraged from transferring to their own companies’ fast-growing wireless units.

Among the unfortunate is former AT&T; phone center sales associate Bob Rumnock.

“Experience doesn’t seem to matter much anymore,” said Rumnock, 43, who is trying to establish a career in acting after AT&T; rebuffed his efforts to transfer to another job earlier this year following the closure of all 338 AT&T; Phone Center stores. “But I can’t bad-mouth [AT&T; Chairman] Bob Allen. I understand that people losing their jobs makes stock prices go up.”

Executives in the wireless industry and other fast-growing segments of the communications business contend that the workers who are being squeezed out of the old phone company jobs don’t have the skills for the new businesses.

For example, the firms that are building the new generation of high-speed wireless voice and data transmission networks--such as Bechtel Group Inc. in San Francisco and AT&T; Network Systems Inc.--are mostly interested in mechanical and electrical engineers and experienced construction managers, and not the telephone operators, sales people and service managers that are mostly being laid off by the local and long-distance telephone companies.

The number of firms advertising for telephone plant construction, engineering and consulting experience has grown 20% in the last five years to about 700, said Alan Richter, a spokesman for Outside Plant, a trade magazine based in Cary, Ill.

“You have huge demand for radio technicians and field service technicians,” said John Egidio, executive vice president of U.S. operations for Geotek Communications Inc., a Montvale, N.J., firm that markets specialized mobile radio services to businesses.

A good chunk of that demand is now coming from relatively small firms that work as contractors to the telecommunications giants. William J. Price, a former telephone construction engineer, launched Price Technical Services Inc. in Sacramento in 1984 and has since hired 129 people and amassed annual revenue of more than $7 million.

The company has designed and built fiber-optic and copper cable communications networks for US West, Teleport Communications Group, Metropolitan Fiber Systems and MCI Communications Group. And there seems to be no shortage of work thanks to new technology and growth in the wireless industry. In fact, Price is even branching out overseas: He says he expects to hire an additional 50 people to take on jobs in Russia.

By contrast, there is currently little demand for the sales, service and management personnel that are being laid off by traditional phone companies. Wireless networks are still testing demand for advanced services, and most communities haven’t even gotten the newest wireless technologies such as personal communications services, a new digital wireless technology.

“The problem is that [the] emerging markets, in aggregate, are smaller than the traditional local telephone market,” said David Goodtree of Forrester Research in Cambridge Mass. “New wireless phones, Internet access and paging are not enough to absorb all of the people being laid off. There is room for some people to be picked up, but most” will have to look elsewhere.

But union officials say some phone companies do not try to maximize the worker resources they have. They say telephone company workers are often discouraged from transferring to the fast-growing wireless units of telephone companies, and that when they do, they often face cuts in benefits and salaries.

“One of our biggest beefs is that many phone companies don’t make provisions for [laid-off] workers in their wireless divisions,” said Jeff Miller, spokesman for the Communications Workers of America. “Look at AT&T.; They are closing all of their phone centers at the same time they are opening up” outlets to sign up wireless customers.

“These are basically the same jobs,” Miller said. “I don’t understand why they can’t place [laid-off] workers in them. It seems like union workers have no access to the tremendous job growth in the wireless industry.”

According to the CWA, telephone operators earn an average weekly wage of $584, telephone service representatives earn $675 per week, and telephone technicians make $837.

There are no comparable wage figures for people in the wireless industry, but some officials speculate salaries may be somewhat lower because the industry isn’t widely unionized.

Telephone company executives, denying that they are anti-union, say they cannot afford to do business in a competitive wireless market the same way they did when they enjoyed monopolies.

“We built our business from the ground up to be able to compete against anyone, so from the beginning it was set up differently from the traditional phone business,” said Jim Gerace, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic Nynex.

Gerace said his company does not shun union workers, and noted that traditional phone company experience is not the sole criterion for employment in an industry increasingly concerned with selling sophisticated services rather than routine ones such as directory assistance.

Likewise, he said, demand in other industries for skilled engineers and other communications technicians makes it unlikely that phone companies will be able to retain such personnel if they are underpaid.

Indeed, some well-paid workers--those with sufficient gumption as well as talent--have voluntarily chosen to restart their careers on the ground floor of the wireless business.

Emery, 41, said he had been happy at Bell Atlantic but found bleak prospects for his level of management. So even though he had a desirable job supervising 20 employees, he jumped ship.

“It was a big risk for me, but it also looked like a risky thing to stay at the phone company,” said Emery, now vice president of operations at American Personal Communications in Washington. “With all the different levels of management being eliminated, it was tougher for someone like me to advance.”

At American Personal, Emery initially found himself with little to oversee. “The biggest adjustment I had to make was doing everything myself,” he said.

American Personal proved to be an instant hit with the public. The service signed up 80,000 subscribers in less than six months, twice as fast as initial projections.

“I am surprised at the rate of our success,” Emery said. “I’ve even been able to hire a few of my old colleagues from Bell Atlantic.”

But Rumnock doesn’t see much opportunity in the phone world.

“My problem was that I am 43 years old,” he lamented. “I guess they just wanted to trade us in for someone just out of college.”

Jube Shiver Jr. can be reached via e-mail at jube.shiver@latimes.com

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Goodbye and Hello

Jobs in traditional telecommunications have been disappearing with mergers and downsizing, but employment on the wireless side of the industry is soaring. A look at the drop in telecom jobs and the boom in wireless work:

Non-wireless telecom jobs (in thousands): 1995: 813.1

Wireless jobs (in thousands): 1995: 68.165

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn., Communications Workers of America

Researched by JENNIFER OLDHAM / Los Angeles Times