Pac Bell Managers Get Crash Course to Learn Jobs of Striking Operators

Outside Pacific Bell’s Burbank offices, about a dozen telephone operators and repair technicians walked a lazy loop in Sunday’s hot afternoon sun, lofting shiny new picket signs that proclaimed “Jobs with Justice” and “CWA Strike Against Pac Bell.”

Inside the building, about a dozen managers methodically leafed through concise, tabulated training manuals as they assisted callers having trouble reaching a dialed number, making collect calls, or seeking to interrupt a call with an emergency message.

In the middle of it all, a private security guard hired by the phone company after union members struck at midnight Saturday said everybody on both sides had been “very quiet.”

“Sundays are very slow. Tomorrow is when it is going to be really effective,” said Pandora Allen, representative of Communication Workers of America Local 9400, directing her pickets outside the phone company’s 24-hour accounting and operator assistance facility at 300 N. 3rd St.

And in Orange County, shorts-clad Pacific Bell executives went to coin-collecting school.

Both sides in the strike over wages and health benefits seemed to consider Sunday a practice run for today, a full-fledged work day, when customers demand more operator assistance, more repairs, new installations and help with bills.

At noon Sunday, Pacific Bell spokeswoman Lissa Zanville, said the Burbank Traffic Operating Position System facility had 11 managers assisting telephone customers, compared to 16 operators on a normal Sunday.

“Most calls now are handled technically, or mechanically, so we don’t need as much human assistance,” Zanville said. “Our (manager) operators are saying there is a strike going on, but the strike is really invisible to the customer.”

The emergency telephone number “911,” which one calls to report a fire or crime or medical crisis, is one of those handled by automated equipment, telephone company officials said, and will not be disrupted by the strike.

Anyone dialing “0” for operator assistance, “411” for directory assistance or “611” for repairs Sunday heard within a ring or two the following recorded message:

“We’re sorry. Due to a work stoppage, the operator will be delayed in assisting you. Please stay on the line, and an operator will answer as soon as possible.”

A caller waited as many as 10 rings after that before a real human voice came on the line.

“We hope we’re cutting into service real good,” said Allen, the striking operator who had fielded her picketers at midnight Saturday. “This morning it took two to three minutes to get an operator. If we let it go more than six rings, the PUC (Public Utility Commission) has a fit.”

Jackie McCoy, normally the coordinator of a Pacific Bell personal computer group in Pasadena, was among the hastily trained “operators” in Burbank on Sunday. Instructed by a company phone message at 3 a.m., she had reported to work before 8 a.m. for the 12-hour shift she will work every day until the strike ends.

Assisting supervisors in training the managerial personnel were a handful of regular operators, who had resigned from their union after the last strike, and chose to work during this one. Unlike the managers, they were on 10-hour shifts.

“I’m not quite used to this pace,” said McCoy, very politely, if slowly, responding to customers with the help of a headset and computer terminal in her first stint as an operator. “My office supports telephone company staff, not customers.”

Kathy El Mahmoud, an equipment engineer in Pasadena who also was assigned to work as an operator at Burbank on Sunday, politely and efficiently responded to customers, consulting her tabulated training manual, then punching keys to transfer a caller to a Spanish speaking manager.

“Just a minute, sir,” she said into her headset. “We are having a work stoppage and I am just sitting on the board, and I don’t remember how to do this . . . .”

When a supervisor called a time-out for El Mahmoud, she said that jumping into an operator’s job was tough.

“It is just that I am so nervous. I am not sure what I am doing,” she said. “I didn’t have any practice calls.”

At the coin-collecting school in Orange County, the executives studied a partially disassembled pay phone.

“We’d rather not have a work stoppage,” said John Adair, normally director of customer access services, as he showed others how to collect money from pay phones. “It’s really very unpleasant. We’re prepared to step up and try and maintain service as best we can--but we’d rather be doing other things on a Sunday.”

Out on the picket lines in Garden Grove, telephone operator Luann Nelson, 29, agreed, saying she was “not real thrilled” with the strike either.

A single mother with a 3-year-old daughter, Nelson said she was worried about paying bills during the strike, even though she supports her union’s objectives.

“This job is high-stress,” she said. “The one good thing is the benefits, and now they’re trying to take them away.”

Times staff writer Lanie Jones in Orange County contributed to this article.