News

A strike by 6,400 Puerto Rican telephone workers, which mushroomed into a general labor strike that virtually stopped all commerce on the island July 7 and 8, was settled as the CWA News went to press.

CWA members at three telecommunications companies have ratified new agreements, winning a key CWA goal of cardcheck recognition along with wage, pension and benefit improvements in each settlement.

LaRoy (Roy) H. Purdy, who comfortably planted his feet in both the worlds of politics and unions, died July 1 at age 92 in a skilled nursing facility near his home in Palm Harbor, Fla.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded a $345,800 grant to continue and expand an occupational stress study initiated three years ago by CWA and the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore.

Virgil D. Parks, who was an administrative assistant to the vice president of District 9 in CWA’s Burlingame, Calif., office, retired March 1. Parks, 61, went to work for Pacific Telesis in June 1956, in Redding, Calif., and soon became active in CWA Local 9419.