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.”

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 believed the majority of workers would return quickly because “people need that paycheck.”

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.

In some offices, the working environment during the next few days figures to be strained as strikers mix with fill-in managers and an estimated 3,000 Pacific Bell workers who crossed picket lines.

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

Many details of the settlement remained unknown Monday. Presidents of CWA locals will be briefed by the union’s negotiating team within a week and will then make recommendations to members of their local.

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

The company’s idea--common among corporations--is to persuade workers to restrict themselves to a network of physicians who offer the company a discount in exchange for a high volume of business.

But the presidents of two CWA locals said Monday 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.”

Close Vote Predicted

Alice Alvarez, president of a CWA local covering Pasadena and East Los Angeles, said 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.

Pacific Bell was 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.

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 writer Myrna Oliver contributed to this story.