Search News
For the Media
For media inquiries, call CWA Communications at 202-434-1168 or email comms@cwa-union.org. To read about CWA Members, Leadership or Industries, visit our About page.
CWA Strikes US WEST to Preserve Job Standards, Quality Service and Health Security for Workers' Fami
DENVER-The Communications Workers of America announced a strike at 12:01 a.m. this morning by 35,000 union workers against US WEST and its subsidiary US WEST Business Resources Inc.
Strike issues included a package of company concession demands that would jeopardize the health security of workers and their families, take thousands of dollars a year out of workers' pockets, and seriously threaten service quality for telephone customers, CWA said.
"It became clear to us this past week that US WEST was not serious about a fair and peaceful settlement, but instead wanted a showdown to attempt to force our members to accept terms that would destroy their working conditions and job standards," said CWA Vice President Sue Pisha, head of the union's District 7 headquartered here.
"US WEST is totally out of step with the mainstream of the telecommunications industry," said CWA President Morton Bahr from the union's international headquarters in Washington, D.C. "CWA settled this year with all the other major companies on labor contracts recognizing the vital role of their skilled, productive workers in generating enormous profits and giving them a competitive edge based on high quality service."
Bahr said that with the other negotiations completed, CWA can focus its full attention and energies on the strike and offer the strikers the support of a $175 million strike fund.
CWA cited as a major strike issue US WEST's demand to drive employees into accepting inferior health plans for their families or else pay thousands of dollars a year to remain in their existing managed care networks. To maintain their present family coverage, for example, workers would have to pay an additional $1,370 a year in Denver, $2,400 in Utah and $3,800 in Washington State. To avoid the costs, they would have to shift to an HMO selected by the company, which in each case is the cheapest plan in town.
(NOTE: At the last minutes before contract expiration, the company proposed a cap to reduce workers' out of pocket costs for family coverage to $840 a year.)
The existing managed care plan was jointly developed by the union and the company with the goal of reducing US WEST's health care costs while providing quality care. The program saved the company $4 million in 1996-97 alone.
On another key issue, instead of addressing CWA's concern over abusive levels of mandatory overtime hours for the workers, US WEST actually proposed terms that worsen the problem. "We've been complaining about thousands of workers being forced to regularly work 60 hours or more every week for the past two or three years. The company's demand is unlimited levels of forced overtime the rest of this year, and a supposed limit next year of 65 hours per week," said Vice President Pisha.
"This is a family issue, it's a health and safety issue, it's very much a customer service issue - and it's just unacceptable in the United States of America in 1998," she stated.
To make matters worse, the company also wants to slash premium pay for overtime hours so that workers could be compelled to work 12 or 14 hours a day at "straight time." "The whole idea of premium pay for overtime was to discourage employers from driving workers to exhaustion and stealing time from their families," CWA's Pisha said, adding: "US WEST seeks to turn the calender back 60 years to the time Americans struggled to establish the 8-hour day."
In the past five years, US WEST has slashed union jobs by 12.5 percent while the number of its access lines has grown by 20 percent. To make up the difference, US WEST is squeezing the extra hours out of too few employees, according to CWA. Extreme downsizing has caused the widely reported service problems in US WEST territory while enabling the company to milk bigger profits from its telephone operation to finance new businesses, such as its cable venture.
Another of US WEST's demands is a pay scheme for technicians tying pay to job completion standards set solely by the company, and driven by the bottom line rather than customer satisfaction.
"The company doesn't know how to properly evaluate the work of our techs even now, and this speed-up plan shows that management doesn't understand the nature of their jobs and the handicaps they face, such as inadequate tools and vehicles and having to cope with deteriorating cable and equipment which US WEST should have upgraded long ago," said Pisha.
The company wants its installation and maintenance people to work as if on an assembly line and meet precise time standards for job completion, CWA says, while in reality they face such variables as driving vast distances to jobs, changing weather conditions, incorrect job dispatching from the company's faulty system, outdated network schematics, and unexpected or misidentified problems to be fixed.
The proposed pay scheme would penalize workers for performing preventive maintenance at a customer's home and reward those who cut corners, rush service and limit time spent on an individual customer's problem.
"Our fight is for quality customer service as well as for health security for our families and maintaining decent job standards at a wealthy Information Age company that should be leading the way in creating good jobs for our communities, not destroying them," said Pisha.
CWA said that US WEST so far has failed to address key union bargaining goals while focusing solely on its own agenda of imposing contract concessions. In addition to reducing oppressive forced overtime levels, the union is seeking to win access by its members to jobs in the growth areas of the communications industry such as data networking and Internet services. CWA made gains in this area in bargaining this year with the other Bell companies and AT&T and Lucent Technologies. None of these companies - like US WEST, all highly profitable and well- positioned in a booming industry - made concession demands of their employees.
CWA represents 630,000 members in telecommunications and other fields such as journalism, broadcasting, printing and publishing, cable TV and airline customer service.
Strike issues included a package of company concession demands that would jeopardize the health security of workers and their families, take thousands of dollars a year out of workers' pockets, and seriously threaten service quality for telephone customers, CWA said.
"It became clear to us this past week that US WEST was not serious about a fair and peaceful settlement, but instead wanted a showdown to attempt to force our members to accept terms that would destroy their working conditions and job standards," said CWA Vice President Sue Pisha, head of the union's District 7 headquartered here.
"US WEST is totally out of step with the mainstream of the telecommunications industry," said CWA President Morton Bahr from the union's international headquarters in Washington, D.C. "CWA settled this year with all the other major companies on labor contracts recognizing the vital role of their skilled, productive workers in generating enormous profits and giving them a competitive edge based on high quality service."
Bahr said that with the other negotiations completed, CWA can focus its full attention and energies on the strike and offer the strikers the support of a $175 million strike fund.
CWA cited as a major strike issue US WEST's demand to drive employees into accepting inferior health plans for their families or else pay thousands of dollars a year to remain in their existing managed care networks. To maintain their present family coverage, for example, workers would have to pay an additional $1,370 a year in Denver, $2,400 in Utah and $3,800 in Washington State. To avoid the costs, they would have to shift to an HMO selected by the company, which in each case is the cheapest plan in town.
(NOTE: At the last minutes before contract expiration, the company proposed a cap to reduce workers' out of pocket costs for family coverage to $840 a year.)
The existing managed care plan was jointly developed by the union and the company with the goal of reducing US WEST's health care costs while providing quality care. The program saved the company $4 million in 1996-97 alone.
On another key issue, instead of addressing CWA's concern over abusive levels of mandatory overtime hours for the workers, US WEST actually proposed terms that worsen the problem. "We've been complaining about thousands of workers being forced to regularly work 60 hours or more every week for the past two or three years. The company's demand is unlimited levels of forced overtime the rest of this year, and a supposed limit next year of 65 hours per week," said Vice President Pisha.
"This is a family issue, it's a health and safety issue, it's very much a customer service issue - and it's just unacceptable in the United States of America in 1998," she stated.
To make matters worse, the company also wants to slash premium pay for overtime hours so that workers could be compelled to work 12 or 14 hours a day at "straight time." "The whole idea of premium pay for overtime was to discourage employers from driving workers to exhaustion and stealing time from their families," CWA's Pisha said, adding: "US WEST seeks to turn the calender back 60 years to the time Americans struggled to establish the 8-hour day."
In the past five years, US WEST has slashed union jobs by 12.5 percent while the number of its access lines has grown by 20 percent. To make up the difference, US WEST is squeezing the extra hours out of too few employees, according to CWA. Extreme downsizing has caused the widely reported service problems in US WEST territory while enabling the company to milk bigger profits from its telephone operation to finance new businesses, such as its cable venture.
Another of US WEST's demands is a pay scheme for technicians tying pay to job completion standards set solely by the company, and driven by the bottom line rather than customer satisfaction.
"The company doesn't know how to properly evaluate the work of our techs even now, and this speed-up plan shows that management doesn't understand the nature of their jobs and the handicaps they face, such as inadequate tools and vehicles and having to cope with deteriorating cable and equipment which US WEST should have upgraded long ago," said Pisha.
The company wants its installation and maintenance people to work as if on an assembly line and meet precise time standards for job completion, CWA says, while in reality they face such variables as driving vast distances to jobs, changing weather conditions, incorrect job dispatching from the company's faulty system, outdated network schematics, and unexpected or misidentified problems to be fixed.
The proposed pay scheme would penalize workers for performing preventive maintenance at a customer's home and reward those who cut corners, rush service and limit time spent on an individual customer's problem.
"Our fight is for quality customer service as well as for health security for our families and maintaining decent job standards at a wealthy Information Age company that should be leading the way in creating good jobs for our communities, not destroying them," said Pisha.
CWA said that US WEST so far has failed to address key union bargaining goals while focusing solely on its own agenda of imposing contract concessions. In addition to reducing oppressive forced overtime levels, the union is seeking to win access by its members to jobs in the growth areas of the communications industry such as data networking and Internet services. CWA made gains in this area in bargaining this year with the other Bell companies and AT&T and Lucent Technologies. None of these companies - like US WEST, all highly profitable and well- positioned in a booming industry - made concession demands of their employees.
CWA represents 630,000 members in telecommunications and other fields such as journalism, broadcasting, printing and publishing, cable TV and airline customer service.