Phone Workers, Bell Companies Continue Talks
Negotiators for five regional telephone companies and unions representing 219,000 workers across the nation were continuing talks on higher pay and job security beyond Saturday’s midnight strike deadline.
Both sides said they wanted to continue talking and that strikes were unlikely.
Negotiations continued into early this morning in Atlanta and Washington. Talks were set to continue this morning in Chicago.
“We do have a 30-day agreement that there will be no strike or lockout,” said Jennings Wooldridge, a spokesman for the Communications Workers of America in St. Louis, where the union is holding talks with Southwestern Bell. “They’ll stay at the table until they hammer out an agreement.”
Southwestern Bell is the only one of the five regional companies that has a previous agreement with the union barring a strike or lockout, but company and union spokesmen in other cities said strikes also appear unlikely.
Similar negotiations were under way in Washington, Atlanta, Chicago and Oakland between four other so-called Baby Bell regional phone companies and the CWA on new contracts. The Baby Bells are Bell Atlantic, Ameritech, BellSouth and Pacific Telesis.
The unions represent workers that include operators, cable installers, switching equipment operators and Yellow Pages advertising salespeople.
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