henry@garp.mit.edu (Henry Mensch) (08/14/89)
Pinched from the New York Times w/o permission:
Workers went on strike against telephone companies in five Midwestern
states, but a tentative agreement averted a walkout in 14 Western
states and negotiations continued past a deadline in five other
states.
And there was no report of progress in strikes that began a week
earlier against telephone companies in 15 states in the Northeast,
West and the Middle Atlantic region. With Sunday's walkout, nearly
200,000 workers are on strike in four regions. Wages, health benefits
and local issues are the main issues in this year's contract talks
between the seven regional telephone companies created by the 1984
breakup of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and two unions, the
Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers.
At 12:01 a.m. Sunday, after negotiations collapsed in Chicago, 39,500
workers went on strike against Ameritech, formally known as the
American Information Technologies Corp., and its subsidiaries serving
12.3 million customers in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and
Wisconsin. But in Denver, US West and the communications workers'
union continued to negotiate beyond the midnight deadline and at 8
a.m. Sunday announced a tentative contract.
[An aside: I'm getting slightly *better* service due to the strike. I
had a service installed the day before the strike; later that day the
dialtone went away, and i phoned next morning to have it taken care
of. NETelebozo sent a tech out today (Sunday!) to finish the
investigation ("the pair went bad") and the work should be completed
tomorrow morning. Usually it's "you have to sit at home all day until
we turn up" sort of nonsense ... ]
# Henry Mensch / <henry@garp.mit.edu> / E40-379 MIT, Cambridge, MA
# <hmensch@uk.ac.nsfnet-relay> / <henry@tts.lth.se> / <henry@sics.bu.oz.au>
[Moderator's Note: The late news Sunday night said the strikes had been
resolved at US West and Southwestern Bell. Nynex, Atlantic Bell and Pacific
Telesis remain out. I had predicted Ameritech would come to terms here,
but obviously I was wrong. They walked out Sunday morning in Chicago. PT]