Breakthrough Reported in NYNEX Strike Talks

NYNEX Corp. and its two unions have reached agreement on the framework of a new contract that could end a bitter 100-day strike, the president of one of the unions said Monday.

Morton Bahr, president of the Communications Workers of America, said a formal announcement would be made later in NYNEX’s home state of New York.

NYNEX, through its subsidiaries New York Telephone and New England Telephone, provides phone service for most of the Northeast.

CWA, representing 40,000 NYNEX workers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which bargains for an additional 20,000 employees, struck the company more than three months ago, resisting its attempt to shift health insurance costs to workers.

Bahr said the unions had successfully fought off those attempts in reaching agreement on the companywide aspects of the contract. Bahr, in an announcement to the AFL-CIO convention in Washington, said local issues remained to be resolved, but said the strike should be over in a week and the strikers back to work next Monday.

He did not provide details of the framework, but the telecommunications workers traditionally negotiate three-year contracts.

“We have saved our health care,” Bahr said. “There are no premiums.”

In Boston, a spokesman for New England Telephone, Peter Cronin, confirmed that “a tentative agreement has been reached with the IBEW.”

He refused to discuss details, but one IBEW member, Stephen St. Peter, said in Boston that the contract, in addition to health benefits fully paid by the company, provides for a 3% salary hike in the first year and 1 1/2% raises in the second and third years in addition to a cost-of-living increase of 2 1/2% to 5%.

Bahr said he had returned to Washington Monday morning from a negotiating session that began Sunday morning and had concluded with the agreement on the companywide framework.

Still to be resolved are local issues such as specific job titles and work rules at the NYNEX subsidiaries.