Phone Pact Achieved; Strike May End Sunday

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and the striking Communications Workers of America announced a tentative agreement Tuesday on a new national contract that could end the 17-day strike against the company by Sunday.

The union’s 155,000 striking workers will start returning to work that day if the CWA and AT&T; are able to reach agreement by midnight Saturday on a variety of issues affecting the company’s six operating divisions. The union will continue to picket company facilities while negotiations on those issues proceed in New Jersey.

Both the CWA and AT&T; said they will benefit from the settlement.

“We have achieved a concession-free agreement that features a major breakthrough in employment security, and in this climate of rollbacks and give-backs in labor negotiations, we were able to win solid wage and benefit improvements,” said Morton Bahr, president of the 650,000-member union at a Washington news conference.

No Pressure on Prices

“The agreements are good for all concerned,” said Herb Linnen, an AT&T; spokesman at a separate Washington news conference. Linnen and other AT&T; officials said the contract will assist AT&T;’s competitive position in the now-deregulated telephone industry. He stressed that the new contract will produce “no undue pressure” to raise the prices of AT&T;’s products.

Bahr said the agreement will yield an 8% wage increase for CWA members over the next three years. He said the total value of the wage and benefit package is about $745 million, and added that the agreement includes pension and medical coverage improvements.

In addition, the company agreed to contribute $21 million over the next three years to an unusual worker retraining program jointly operated by AT&T; and the union. Union officials called it an important job security provision.

Union leader Bahr acknowledged that under the agreement there would be no cost-of-living adjustment increases during the three years. However, Bahr stressed that the union retained contract language, first secured in 1971, that could provide for future cost-of-living adjustments. AT&T; had sought to eliminate that language, as it did in bargaining with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents about 45,000 of its employees.

Could Be ‘Awful Error’

Bahr said that union economists do not expect dramatic increases in inflation during the life of the contract. He conceded in the press conference that if inflation shoots up into double-digit figures, “then we will have made an awful error.”

Two knowledgeable union sources indicated that the CWA had been reluctant to give up cost-of-living adjustments for three years but decided to do so when it became apparent that AT&T; was prepared to sustain a long strike.

During the strike, AT&T; has used about 20,000 management employees to fill in for the 36,000 striking long-distance operators and other union personnel who left their jobs, and there was little evidence of disruption in customer services.

AT&T; officials have maintained that cost-of-living provisions in the contract made it difficult for the company to control prices becauses wage rates were being changed automatically to reflect changes in the government’s consumer price index.

AT&T; achieved partial success in one of its principal goals in the negotiations--the ability to reclassify some of the 20,000 technicians who install and repair large business telephone systems. Under the agreement, the company will be able to create two new categories of technicians, permitting recruitment of new workers at lower wage rates.

The union had feared that this would lead to layoffs of veteran employees and might pit its members against one another. The agreement provides that the new categories of technician will not be created until January, 1987, and Bahr said the union won protections limiting AT&T;’s ability to use the technician’s assistant position to eliminate veteran workers.

The CWA won increased protection against the subcontracting of work by the company, a matter of increasing concern to the union. “Subcontracting of work will not take place where layoffs are pending or where layoffs have occurred and people are on a recall list,” said union spokeswoman Francine Zucker.

Bahr said the company agreed to institute a major employment security program. “The package represents a milestone in terms of employment security protections for our members and a first within the telecommunications industry,” he said.

AT&T; will contribute $7 million in each of the next three years to a worker training corporation jointly owned by the union and AT&T; and called the Alliance for Employment Growth and Development. The corporation will provide career counseling and skill and aptitude assessment to help CWA members plan for their future employment, Zucker said.

The company will make annual forecasts on areas of growth and decline in its business and will supplement them with semiannual reports. “This will give people an idea where they want to channel their energies,” said AT&T; spokesman Bob Kinkead.

The strike, which began June 1, has been closely watched in labor circles and on Wall Street. This was the first national contract negotiated between AT&T; and the union since the company was broken up by court order in 1984.

More than 30,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers already have ratified agreements with some terms that are inferior to what the CWA achieved. However, under a so-called “me too” clause in the agreement, they will get virtually all of the gains the CWA negotiated.

Officials of both the union and management expressed confidence Tuesday that the local issues can be resolved by Saturday, enabling the strike to end. However, one CWA leader cautioned that some stumbling blocks remain and quoted the popular adage of former New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”