Verizon Strike Ends

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 24, 2000 -- With the last of its union employees returningto work, Verizon Communications can now turn to dealing withconsumers frustrated by delayed repairs and unfilled orders for newservice.

The phone giant estimates it will take a month to clear 230,000such requests that piled up over the 18-day strike.

Verizon, the nation’s largest local phone company and wirelessbusiness, reached agreement with union negotiators late Wednesdayon a tentative contract for 35,000 workers in six mid-Atlanticstates and the District of Columbia.

About 50,000 other workers in New York and New England settledtheir contracts last e weekend and returned to the job Monday. Somein New York stayed off the job Wednesday, honoring picket lines setup by striking workers from the mid-Atlantic region.

Settlement Praised

Union leaders say workers will return to their jobs with new jobprotections.

“This settlement secures the future for our members at thiscompany, and it also helps sharpen Vernon’s competitive edge,”said Communications Workers of America President Morton Bahr. “Inmany ways, it gives our members the ability to do their job evenbetter.”

Verizon officials said the offer was substantially the same asone that was on the table days ago, with the cost of the totalpackage for all union employees unchanged. While still protectingthe interests of workers, the contract enables the company to stayahead in a robust telecommunications market, the company said.

The agreement “gives us the flexibility we need to compete inthe Internet era, satisfying the company’s need to manage theworkload while meeting customer demands for outstanding service andaccess to the latest technology,” said Lawrence T. Babbio Jr.,Verizon vice chairman and president.

The settlement with employees in Pennsylvania, New Jersey,Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District ofColumbia meant that all workers would be back at their jobsThursday. Company officials say they can focus attention on the63,000 repair requests and 200,000 orders that have accumulatedsince the strike began Aug. 6.

Massive Delays

About 30,000 managers had filled in for employees during theheight of the strike, but they could not fully prevent delays inreaching operators for directory assistance and billing inquiries.

The employees represented by the International Brotherhood ofElectrical Workers and the CWA went on strike Aug. 6, after theircontracts expired with Verizon, the new name for the combined BellAtlantic and GTE telephone companies. More than 25 million phoneusers in the East were affected by the walkout.

Talks between the CWA unit from the mid-Atlantic region andVerizon became entangled over local issues and concerns aboutmandatory overtime. Currently, workers can be ordered to put in 10to 15 hours of overtime a week.

Under the tentative agreement, customer service representativescould not be required to work more than 7.5 hours of overtimeweekly. Technicians and operators in the region would have aneight-hour-per-week cap on mandatory overtime, beginning next year.

12-Percent Raise

All three tentative agreements include a 12-percent increase inwages over the life of the three-year contracts, options for allemployees for purchasing 100 shares of Verizon stock and a 0.7percent limit on the number of jobs in any region that can be movedto another area in a year.

Unions feared Verizon would shift work to areas of cheaper laborwithin its newly expanded territory.

Through the negotiations, the unions also won an agreement tolet them try organizing workers in the company’s largely nonunionwireless division using sign-up cards rather than holding anelection. The unions must get signed cards from 55 percent ofwireless workers in a specific group to represent them. Thatagreement takes effect in six months.

The strike was markedly longer than a two-day CWA walkout in1998 against Bell Atlantic. But one of the phone companies mostacrimonious labor disputes came in 1989, when workers remained onstrike for more than four months before reaching terms with Nynex,the New York-New England phone company that later merged with BellAtlantic.