Making Our Union Stronger in Tough Times: In Telecom, Quality Jobs Mean Quality Service

Maintaining quality jobs in telecommunications goes hand in hand with preserving quality service, and CWA is leading the way in protecting consumers and workers. 

Some telecom companies have chosen the low road and allowed service to decline by failing to upgrade or maintain equipment, lines and service.  CWA has been successfully fighting back against this approach, by intervening with state regulators, pressing for the build out of high-speed broadband and other new technologies, and helping workers upgrade their skills and training as technology changes.

A CWA campaign at Century Tel/Embarq won a pledge from the company to continue to provide quality service following its merger. This included a commitment to invest in new technologies, including high-speed broadband, and to make certain that CWA-represented workers do that new work, what CWA calls "the jobs of the future." There will be about 4,500 CWA members at the merged company.

"This agreement happened because we intervened in states where approval by state regulators is required for the merger to go ahead," said Telecommunications Vice President Jimmy Gurganus. "This gave us the leverage we needed with the company to have a voice in how it will operate after the merger.

Under the agreement with Century Tel/Embarq, bargaining unit jobs are protected, and job cutbacks will be limited to no more than one half of one percent of the existing bargaining unit for 18 months from the date of the merger.

Century Tel/Embarq also agreed that it will not shift union work to nonunion locations and that it won't reduce the percentage of jobs held by union members, even if the company shrinks.

"This is a tremendous agreement," said Ken Saether, president of CWA Local 7906 which represents Century Tel workers in Oregon. "It shows what can be accomplished when we are proactive and focus on what companies are planning before it's too late," he said.

The agreement also addressed another critical concern for CWA — whether CenturyTel/Embarq would allocate sufficient resources and capital to improve service quality, build infrastructure, and especially important, build out broadband.

In a big gain for customers, CenturyTel/Embarq pledged to build out high-speed broadband to unserved and underserved areas. Century Tel/Embarq mainly serves rural communities where access to high-speed Internet networks has been limited.

Previously, few resources were expended to address infrastructure needs or build out broadband. Instead, the companies were spending millions to help fund a tenfold increase in the annual dividend to shareholders.

The merger, expected to close by the end of June, will create a company with more than 8 million access lines in 33 states. Century Tel currently serves customers in 17 states in the Midwest and West and Embarq provides service in 16 states in the East.

CWA also is making real progress in linking quality service and quality jobs at Verizon.

In West Virginia, CWA intervened last year before the state's Public Service Commission to examine growing numbers of complaints from customers about declining service quality. Verizon was ordered to invest more resources into maintaining and improving its infrastructure and to increase the number of technicians who could make the necessary upgrades.

In Maryland, CWA is currently mobilizing consumers and workers to urge the state's public service commission to reject a proposed settlement that would allow Verizon to increase telephone rates for thousands of customers and allow Verizon to avoid service standards.

"This is one of the worst agreements we have seen," said District 2 Vice President Ron Collins in urging the state to scrap the settlement. "It practically rewards the company for poor performance," he said.

"Verizon's service deficiencies are the direct result of management decisions and they hurt our members' jobs as well as the public we serve," Collins stressed.

Last year, in neighboring Virginia, CWA helped derail legislation supported by Verizon that would have deregulated basic phone service.

CWAers succeeded in persuading lawmakers that in rural areas, there was no competing service and no way to justify deregulation.