"Bell Atlantic is an intensely anti-union corporation and with a long history of negotiating collective agreements and then later violating them," an employee of BA tells us - provided that we don’t reveal their name.

The abuses of Bell Atlantic against their employees and subscribers were detailed in 1994 in a report from the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives of the United States (del Comité Sobre lo Jurídico de la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos), then presided over by the Democratic Jack Brooks.

That same year, the daily Washington Post published an article on how the Bell companies spent $20 million per year in a multi-million dollar program multimillionaire to win support in activist organizations.

But their abuses have continued.

When they bought the cellular telephony subsidiary of NYNEX some years ago, Bell Atlantic negotiated an agreement with their employees. The union that represents them had to take a case to the Supreme Court of United States in order to enforce the agreement which they had previously accepted.

It was worse when they bought the rest of NYNEX in September of 1997. So that the purchase was authorised, Bell Atlantic then promised the Federal Commission of Communications and the commissions of public service in several states that would honor the collective agreements which the workers of NYNEX had with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). However, only two months later they announced openly that they never intended to honour the clauses that provided early retirement to the NYNEX employees.

In February, BA began to negotiate an extension of two years to the agreements with the CWA and the IBEW, which expired on 8 August. In July, after having negotiated a contract with those unions, the company refused to sign it. Towards the end of the month, BA returned to the table of negotiations with demands that the unionists considered unconscionable. For example, the bosses wanted to increase the amount of subcontracted work going to non-union firms ("outsourcing"), and to start a new two level salary system by which new employees would enter with low wages. In addition, Bell Atlantic insists in forcing the employees to work extended schedules (overtime).

Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor studies at Cornell University, explained in the daily New York Times (13 August) that this labor victory will probably inspire employees in other industries to fight against the practice of subcontracting to non-union companies. She also pointed out that now the bosses will think twice before subcontracting.

Bronfenbrenner pointed out that the Bell Atlantic underestimated the militancy of the CWA. Similar examples of that militancy, she commented, were seen six months before the agreement expired, when their members begin to wear red clothes in the workplace once a week in order to express their solidarity.

According to Jeffrey Keefe, professor of labor relationships in the University of Rutgers, the worker/boss situation in Bell Atlantic got complicated when it bought NYNEX. In 1989 NYNEX had a strike of

Four months, after which the management was forced to make concessions in several areas, including overtime. From then, NYNEX has adopted a conciliatory posture toward their employees, in contrast to Bell Atlantic. When Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX, the employees of BA began to question why they were not able to have the same benefits as at NYNEX.

At the moment the Bell Atlantic-CWA agreement waits for the approval of the regulators. According to the North American press, the agreement will expire within two years and will leave in limbo the union organisation rights of 7,100 employees in the cellular telephony unit.

The CWA represents 600.000 workers in the public and private sectors, including phone companies GTE, AT& T, the NBC and ABC telelinks, and several newspapers.

Currently, 36,000 workers are on strike at the US West telephone company (created by the break up of the old AT&T monopoly) because they could not reach an agreement on the same issues of enforced extra workloads and the creation of an unfair salary scale.

In Puerto Rico, there is the possibility of a strike by Local 3150 of CWA in AT& T, when the collective agreement concludes on 28 August.

Text © copyright Carmelo Ruiz Marrero, August 1998, approximate translation into English by Donald MacDonald.

Click here for original text in Spanish language.