41,000 Telephone Workers Go on Strike at Pacific Bell

More than 41,000 Pacific Bell workers walked off the job early this morning, moments after a midnight strike deadline and negotiators in Oakland failed to produce a new contract before the old one expired at 11:59 p.m. Saturday.

“A strike has been called,” Nancy Pacheco, a spokeswoman for a Los Angeles local of the Communications Workers of America, said at midnight. “We’re really excited about this.”

Pacheco said the CWA got approval at 11:30 p.m. from international headquarters in Washington to walk out if agreement was not reached by midnight. That had been the California locals’ vow. She said workers moved quickly to mount picket lines around Pacific Bell facilities throughout the state and at Nevada Bell facilities in the Reno area.

Pacific Bell spokeswoman Lissa Zanville confirmed a few moments later that “talks have broken off. They’re at an impasse,” she said. “It’s official.”

No new negotiating session with the CWA had been scheduled, she said. But Zanville added that negotiations were continuing with two other unions representing several hundred highly specialized workers.

Zanville said teams drawn from the company’s 17,000 non-union managers quickly moved in to occupy the union workers’ vacated positions to continue operation of local telephone service. She said little disruption in service is anticipated because of the company’s highly automated network. But customers could experience delays if they need help from an operator, directory assistance or if they need equipment repaired or installed.

The Pacific Bell strike followed one called 90 minutes before a midnight East Coast strike deadline against New York-based Nynex. There, 60,000 union workers at New York Telephone and New England Telephone help provide local service throughout much of the Northeast.

However, a settlement was reached in Atlanta, headquarters of BellSouth, whose local phone companies serve nine Southeastern states. And along the Eastern Seaboard between those two companies’ territories, talks continued through the night in Philadelphia, home of Bell Atlantic.

Contracts with the three remaining “Baby Bells”--Chicago-based Ameritech, Denver-based U S West and St. Louis-based Southwestern Bell--expire Aug. 12. The three companies employ 131,000 union workers and provide service in 24 Midwestern and Pacific Northwest states.

Principal sticking points at Pacific Bell--as at Nynex and the other regional companies--center on health benefits and wages. The Communication Workers of America in California maintains that Pacific Bell wants to “shift the cost” of health insurance to their employees even though health costs fail to justify any increased employee payments, which the CWA calls “give-backs.”

The wage package--reportedly 5% over three years at Pacific Bell with no annual cost-of-living adjustments--also falls far short of worker demands.

Pacific Bell declined to discuss bargaining points.

The gender gap in terms of pay is also a major issue at Pacific Bell’s negotiations, which were taking place at an undisclosed but neutral location in Oakland, said Vira Milirides of the CWA’s Western regional office in Burlingame.

“The gap between women’s and men’s wages had begun to narrow significantly,” Milirides said, but Pacific Bell’s latest offer would reverse that advance. “We will not allow it,” she added.

Milirides said the company’s wage offer proposes greater gains among the top five pay scales, which tend to be dominated by men. Operators, mostly women, are at the lowest rung in an industry that is among the largest employers of women. Current pay for Los Angeles workers ranges from $465.50 a week for operators to $654.50 for skilled technicians.

The strike against Nynex was announced in New York by Jan Pierce, vice president of the CWA. Formal negotiations had broken off Friday, but the union waited until 10:30 p.m. Saturday (EDT) to call a strike. Both sides remain far apart on wages and even farther apart on health benefits, Pierce said, though such issues as use of subcontractors and extra pay for night shifts are also unresolved.

Meanwhile, Gaye Williams Mack at CWA international headquarters in Washington said no details were immediately available on the settlement with Atlanta-based BellSouth. She added that chances of averting a walkout had been considered best there and worst at Nynex.

Talks with Pacific Bell began June 13, but CWA members voted last month to strike at midnight Aug. 5 unless an acceptable offer was reached.

“We have never extended a contract in the Bell System,” Ellyn Edwards, a CWA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, had said on Saturday after union where members spent the afternoon preparing picket signs.

Times staff writer Gregory Crouch contributed to this story.