Pacific Bell and Strikers Reach Pact : 2-Week Walkout Ends With 3-Year Tentative Accord

After negotiating beyond midnight for a second consecutive day, representatives of Pacific Bell and 41,800 telephone company workers reached tentative agreement Sunday on a three-year contract, ending a two-week strike that meant sluggish service for many of the phone company’s 9.1 million California customers.

In terms of wages, the new contract did not differ significantly from the last pre-strike offer made by the phone company. It contains a 9.4% increase over three years plus a small increase in company profit-sharing.

However, officials of the Communications Workers of America claimed victory on the most emotional issue of the strike--company demands that employees pay a greater share of health costs. The union said the company had significantly modified its plan to stop paying 100% of treatment costs. Pacific Bell would only say it was satisfied that significant cost-saving changes in the health plan had been made.

Strikers Returning to Work

Some striking employees began reporting to work Sunday morning after receiving word from CWA strike captains that a settlement had been reached at 1:30 a.m. between teams of negotiators meeting in a hotel here.

Phone company officials said the 17,000 managers who have been filling temporary job assignments since the strike began Aug. 6 will remain in those positions for several days. Because the settlement gives workers up to five calendar days to return, it will probably take a full week before all managers and strikers are back in their normal jobs, spokesmen for the company and the union said.

The contract must be ratified by CWA’s membership. Workers will have until Sept. 22 to return mailed ballots.

Health Care Issue Key

It is unusual for membership to vote against ratification. However, in June, 15,000 GTE California workers voted 55% to 45% against a contract negotiated by another set of CWA representatives. Those GTE workers approved a newly drafted contract two weeks ago.

Because both corporations and unions have come to view the issue of health costs with increasing intransigence, the Pacific Bell strike had been expected to last several weeks. Union leaders acknowledged that their membership--which receives no strike pay--would become more vulnerable to picket-line crossing if the strike lasted more than another week.

Pacific Bell said there were 450 incidents of vandalism against company equipment during the strike, and the union reported several incidents in which picketers at phone company facilities were struck by cars.

But on Sunday officials of both sides said they had reached a fair settlement.

Bob Eastwood, executive director of labor relations for Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell, which has 750 employees, said the contract provides many “benefits which will help employees balance work and family life.”

Harry Ibsen, vice president of CWA’s District 9, called the settlement “a good contract” and added, “Although we didn’t attain everything we needed, we attained a whole lot more than they were willing to give us at the beginning.”

Going into the strike, Pacific Bell employees were among a rapidly shrinking group of American workers whose employers covered virtually all medical costs for those who joined the company’s health maintenance organization.

The proportion of American businesses offering this “first-dollar” coverage had fallen to 29% last year from 53% in 1984, according to one benefits-consulting firm.

The new Pacific Bell contract alters this--but, according to Ibsen, not to the degree the company had sought.

The agreement calls for Pacific Bell to create a new health network in 1991. Following the lead of many companies, Pacific Bell will try to entice employees to use a group of doctors who offer lower rates in exchange for mass business. Employees who seek doctors outside the network would pay up to 30% of the cost of the treatment. The union had opposed the health network because in many cases--hospitalization and surgery, for example--it paid only 90% of the cost, Ibsen said. However, he said that during negotiations, Pacific Bell agreed to union demands to pay 100% of hospital visits.

Ibsen also said the phone company agreed to drop a requirement that retirees begin paying premiums for their company-paid coverage.

Weeks ago, Pacific Bell had dropped a proposal to institute a basic health premium for all workers.

Kate Flynn, a phone company spokeswoman, said the company would not comment on the specifics of the negotiations. She said the contract represented compromises on both sides rather than a “victory” for either.

Phone company executive Eastwood noted that the contract extends unpaid leave for the care of newborn or adopted children, pays reimbursement for adoption expenses and calls for semiannual forecasts of job cuts and expansions to help workers determine career opportunities and training needs.

Pacific Bell workers now earn from $228 a week for some operators to $650 for some skilled technicians, according to union figures.

Although most rank-and-file employees knew few details of the agreement Sunday, many were clearly relieved.

“We haven’t heard such loud shouting of joy since they’ve gone out,” said Jessie Wilson, president of CWA Local 9415 in Oakland.

But Dan McCrory, a San Fernando Valley telephone company employee who worked as a CWA press spokesman during the strike, said he was personally “a little disappointed” by the small wage increase and was worried that negotiators might not have won enough on the health front.

“Some of us aren’t satisfied. We feel we could have held out longer,” McCrory said. “It makes you wonder what you stay out two weeks for.”

By settling with CWA, Pacific Bell became the fourth of seven “Baby Bells”--the regional holding companies set up in 1984 to take over the local phone business of American Telephone & Telegraph in the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit--to reach a new contract with employees.

Three of the companies--Atlanta-based Bell South, Denver-based US West and St. Louis-based Southwestern Bell--obtained agreements without a strike.

Strikes continue at Washington-based Bell Atlantic; NYNEX, which serves the Northeast, and Chicago-based Ameritech. Those three companies employ 147,000 workers and serve 35 million customers.

Focus on ‘Family Issues’

Because relatively low inflation is keeping wage demands down--the average annual raise obtained through collective bargaining in the country this year is 3.3%--attention in the regional telephone strikes has been focused on “family issues” such as health care.

In attempting to persuade employees that they should pay for more of their health care, employers have noted that the average company now spends about 12% of a worker’s combined salary and benefits on health care, compared to only 3% a decade ago. Last year alone, the cost of employers’ health plans rose an average of 18.6%, according to one study.

Many companies without unions pay a far smaller share of the health-care costs of their workers. Unionized companies say this puts them at a competitive disadvantage. AT&T;, whose major rivals in long-distance phone service and computers are non-union, made that argument last spring when it asked its unions to pay more of their health costs.

A strike against AT&T; by the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was averted when AT&T; backed down. In exchange, the unions agreed to cooperate in seeking national solutions to the health-care cost crisis.

Organized labor believes that if corporate demands for cost-sharing are resisted, companies will be more willing to support legislation to create a national health insurance system.

Morain reported from Oakland and Baker reported from Los Angeles; Times staff writer Myrna Oliver also contributed to this story.