Telephone Workers in Midwest Join Strike

Telephone company workers in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin joined the ranks of striking “Baby Bell” employees on both coasts as a walkout against three companies entered its second week Monday.

No talks were scheduled between Ameritech and representatives for 35,000 unionized workers in the Midwest, who declared a strike early Sunday, said a spokeswoman for Illinois Bell.

About 13,000 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers settled last month.

One company, Bell Atlantic, offered the Communications Workers of America a revised offer regarding medical benefits at a bargaining session in Washington, company spokesman Larry Plumb said, but he did not give details.

Bill Bickers, a spokesman for the CWA, said the union’s 41,000 members remained pessimistic. “We’re at about the same place we were when we went on strike” eight days ago, he said Monday.

As the strike continued from coast to coast, incidents of vandalism were reported at several local telephone company sites.

In New York, a vehicle struck and injured a picket outside a New York Telephone Co. facility in Valhalla.

At another New York phone company site in Elmont, police investigated a bomb threat and a fire that officials said was deliberately set to a company car.

The CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions struck Aug. 6 against Pacific Telesis telephone companies in California and Nevada, Bell Atlantic, and NYNEX in the Northeast and New England, idling more than 150,000 employees.

No new talks were scheduled with union representatives and Pacific Telesis, NYNEX and at Michigan Bell, officials said.