Phone Workers Trickling Back Amid Some Grousing Over Pact

Pacific Bell’s work force trickled back Monday in the wake of the settlement of a 15-day strike by the company’s 41,800 California workers.

The slow trek to normalcy--with from 10% of workers returning at some offices to more than half at others--was not surprising. Under terms of a tentative agreement reached Sunday between phone company negotiators and representatives of the Communications Workers of America, employees have until Wednesday to check in by phone with their supervisors and until Friday to go back to their jobs.

While many workers expressed relief at being able to return, there was some initial sentiment against ratification, based primarily on the health benefits called for in the new three-year contract, which is aimed at reducing Pacific Bell’s medical costs.

To keep operations running smoothly as the striking workers returned, many of the 17,000 managers who were assigned to temporary 12-hour-a-day duty as operators and technical workers during the strike remained on the job. But customers calling directory assistance in some areas still experienced delays; a tape-recorded message informed them that “although our strike has ended, we are still arranging for the return of our operators.”

In Orange County, Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen said delays in directory-assistance calls can be expected through this week as 353 operators return to work locally.

“By Friday, service will be back on track,” Bonniksen added.

Operator service, however, should show immediate improvement, Bonniksen said. While there remains a backlog of about a week for new service orders, repairs should be completed right away.

Del McBryde, president of CWA Local 9510 in Santa Ana, said 4,731 union members in Orange County are glad to be back.

“They’re happy the strike is over,” McBryde said. “They are disappointed about some parts of the agreement, but the good points outweigh the bad.”

Neither Pacific Bell nor CWA was able to make a systemwide estimate of the number of workers who showed up Monday. But Vira Milirides, a CWA spokeswoman in San Francisco, said she believes that the majority of workers would return quickly because “people need that paycheck.”

Bonniksen said nearly 65% of Pacific Bell’s work force of 5,240 in its service area for Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties returned to work Monday, although exact figures were not available as workers continued to report in. She added:

“It wasn’t like a wall of people was trying to get in.”

The CWA paid no strike benefits during the walkout. The union’s San Fernando Valley local spent more than $20,000 for groceries for needy members’ families during the strike, according to the local’s president, Ellen Edwards.

The tentative contract must still be ratified by the CWA membership, with mailed ballots to be returned to union headquarters by Sept. 22.

The new health plan, which would take effect in 1991, would create a network of doctors whose fees would be paid primarily by Pacific Bell. Employees who used the network would pay no more than 5% to 10% of the cost of treatment and nothing at all in some cases.

Employees who choose to go outside the network, however, would have to pay the first $1,000 of medical expenses per year out of their own pockets, up from the current deductible of $150. Workers subsequently would be reimbursed for 70% of the cost of treatment.

But the presidents of two CWA locals said Monday that they are upset that deductibles had been raised and that even those employees who used the new network would have to pay a small share of the cost. Under the old contract, Pacific Bell paid 100% of the cost for workers who used an approved health maintenance organization.

“It’s premature to make a prediction about ratification,” said Valley CWA leader Edwards, “but I feel like the bargaining committee let me down.”

Alice Alvarez, president of a CWA local covering Pasadena and East Los Angeles, said that there was not enough information yet to make a judgment on the contract but predicted that the membership’s vote on ratification “will be close, either way.”

“I’ve heard an awful lot of grumbling this morning,” said Al Anderson, a communications technician who returned Monday to his job at a phone company switching-control center in Beverly Hills. “I rather doubt” that the new contract will be ratified. “A lot of people have been saying that (after the ratification vote), we may have to go out again.”

The new contract gives workers increases in wages, bonuses and other payments that will raise salaries overall by 11% over three years. Pay currently ranges from about $228 a week for some operators to $650 for some skilled technicians.

In addition to the unhappiness over health benefits, some union members also were concerned that the new contract contains no “amnesty” clause prohibiting Pacific Bell from disciplining strikers accused of illegal acts.

There were 450 “serious acts of sabotage or vandalism” during the walkout, according to the company, which said Sunday that rewards of $10,000 to $25,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction remain in effect.

Alvarez on Monday said that a member of her union, who was arrested during the strike for allegedly spraying a can of foul-smelling, nontoxic liquid at a strikebreaker, had been suspended by phone company officials hours after she returned to work.

Strikes continued Monday 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.

Times staff writers Thomas Becher in Orange County and Myrna Oliver in Los Angeles contributed to this story.