GTE Signs Contract With 12,000 Hourly Workers

GTE California, the largest employer in Thousand Oaks, said it signed a 39-month contract with the Communications Workers of America, which represents most of the phone company’s 12,000 hourly employees.

GTE said the contract, which takes effect immediately, calls for general wage increases of about 10% over the next three years and makes hourly employees eligible for additional incentives of up to 1.8% in 1995 and 3% in 1996, based on productivity factors.

Employees of GTE California, a unit of the GTE Corp. based in Stamford, Conn., will also have the option of a managed health care plan or a health maintenance organization. Previously, hourly employees did not have access to managed health.

The just-signed contract will expire at midnight, March 17, 1996, and replaces the extension of a contract that had expired Dec. 18.