Pac Bell Workers Reject Pact; New Strike Possible

In what could set the stage for another California phone strike, the membership of the Communication Workers of America rebuffed its leaders Friday by voting resoundingly to reject a contract that was tentatively approved last month by union and Pacific Bell negotiators. The tentative settlement had ended a two-week work stoppage by more than 40,000 employees.

The vote against ratification was announced in Oakland, where ballots submitted by workers from 30 CWA locals were tallied. Chagrined union officials--who had expected defeat--did not release the total vote, saying only that members “overwhelmingly” voted no.

Ever since the tentative contract was signed on Aug. 20, it had been bitterly criticized by leaders of some CWA locals, who chastised their negotiators for agreeing to provisions that gave Pacific Bell supervisors more power to transfer, downgrade and lay off workers.

The presidents of some locals, particularly in Southern California, said flatly that their union’s bargaining team had underestimated the willingness of CWA’s membership to remain on strike longer and had settled too quickly.

“I’m very happy but I’m also very anxious about what happens next,” said Ellen Edwards, president of a CWA local in the San Fernando Valley that voted 77% against ratification.

In responding to Friday’s vote, CWA officials had the option of immediately resuming the strike. Instead, they merely left that possibility open by requesting that Pacific Bell reopen negotiations while workers stay on the job under the terms of the old contract.

The union could call a strike whenever it felt negotiations were souring, or set a strike deadline, to put pressure on the phone company.

Phone company spokeswoman Kate Flynn said Pacific Bell is willing to resume talks if the union will propose specific sections for a new contract.

Friday’s vote represented the second time in three months that CWA members in California repudiated a contract negotiated by their union.

In June, 15,000 GTE California workers voted 55% to 45% against a tentative contract. They subsequently voted in favor of a newly drafted contract in early August, avoiding a strike.

Both CWA contract rejections are part of a national trend in which union members are growing increasingly militant about health and job security issues rather than wages.

In the GTE vote, members were upset that negotiators had given in to company demands that workers pay a higher share of medical costs.

In the Pacific Bell vote, union negotiators were able to squeeze concessions out of management on health issues but could not budge the company on its demands for greater flexibility in moving workers from office to office or job to job.

At issue was Pacific Bell’s “forced movement” plan, which is important to the company in an era in which technological improvements can quickly make jobs superfluous and cause sudden manpower surpluses in certain parts of the corporation.

Under the old contract, decisions on how the company transferred employees or changed their work were based strictly on seniority. In other words, if there were too many workers in an Inglewood office but a need for more in San Diego, workers with the most seniority could reject supervisors’ requests that they transfer.

The tentative settlement, however, developed a new standard. It said that commuting hardship--not seniority--would determine which workers could turn down a forced-movement order. A commuting hardship is defined as living 35 miles or a one-hour drive from an office. The settlement also eliminated some bureaucratic steps that supervisors had to go through to make staffing changes.

The changes, union members complained, undercut job security by making it possible in some instances to strip more senior workers of the job placement and job title priority they traditionally enjoy. The changes also made it easier for the company to shift a worker to another office than to retrain him or her for another job, the union said.

Before the vote was counted, Harry Ibsen, vice president of CWA District 9, which covers California, said the union negotiators had strongly opposed changing the “forced-movement” plan, but to no avail.

“If a company says ‘No, no, no, we’re not going to do this any more’ ” there is little negotiators for a union can do, Ibsen said.

The strike against Pacific Bell began Aug. 6, when a three-year contract between the union and the company expired. The phone company put 17,000 supervisors on six-day-a-week duty to run the system, which serves 9.1 million customers in California, 90% of them residential.

Pacific Bell took advantage of its computerized technology to complete most calls during the strike, but directory assistance became sluggish and orders for new installations fell far behind schedule.

Pacific Bell was one of four of seven so-called “Baby Bells” that were struck when old contracts expired in August. The seven regional holding companies were set up in 1984 to take over the local phone business of American Telephone & Telegraph in the settlement of an antiturust lawsuit.

Strikes by members of CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at Washington-based Bell Atlantic and Chicago-based Ameritech have been resolved, but the strike continues at New York-based Nynex, which serves about 10 million customers in New York state, Connecticut and five other New England states. Talks between Nynex and representatives of 60,000 striking workers broke off a week ago.

At Pacific Bell and the other Baby Bells where contracts were negotiated this summer, the most debated issue was management’s contention that employees should be required to pay a greater proportion of soaring health costs, which in some companies have been increasing 20% a year.

Under the old contract, Pacific Bell workers were among a rapidly shrinking group of American employees whose employers covered virtually all medical costs.

Management proposed that workers begin paying an annual health insurance premium and that workers pay the first 10% of medical costs in some instances. The company also wanted to create a “heath care network” in which employees would be required to use a company-approved list of doctors.

When the tentative settlement was announced, CWA negotiators said they had forced management to back down on many of its health care changes and had also forced the company to significantly increase its wage package, offering a 9.4% pay increase over three years plus a small increase in company profit-sharing.