Back in Service

A trend-setting settlement

Some 675,000 telephone workers will be back on the job this week, ending their strike that began Aug. 7. Aside from the workers, not too many people are likely to notice. So automated is the Bell System that it handles 561 million calls a day with fewer employees than ever. As a result, most U.S. phone communications hummed along during the strike without so much as an interfering bleep, although callers had to wait a little longer for directory and operator assistance from substituting supervisory people or from what Harley Shaiken, a labor analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called "telescabs."

The three striking unions, the Communications Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the far smaller Telecommunications International Union, won a modest first-year maximum 5.5% wage increase vs. the 2.7% offered originally by American Telephone & Telegraph. That would mean $26.13 a week for the highest-paid, most experienced workers. With cost of living increases plus another 1.5% wage hike during the contract's second and third years, the union calculates that workers would get total pay raises of 16.4%. Formal ratification by the workers is expected in early October.

Despite the minor disruptions and moderate increases, Communications Workers President Glenn Watts called the strike a "success in every sense." The importance of the A T & T settlement lies in a set of agreements to help workers adjust to the increasingly rapid rate of economic and technological change. Said Pat Choate, a labor specialist with TRW, the defense and aerospace company: "I'd be surprised if these conditions don't become part of other contracts and even more surprised if they don't find themselves endorsed in national legislation."

Like many union contracts, A T & T's new one says that workers whose jobs are eliminated by automation will be given training so that they will have the skills needed to perform another job. But the Bell contract attempts to go beyond that by starting training long before employees even learn that their jobs may be wiped out. The company is expected to spend about $36 million for job-displacement training and career-development classes in technical, sales, clerical and other basic skills that will enable union members to broaden their career horizons and enrich their lives. Says C.W.A. Official Dina Beaumont: "We want members involved in planning their careers."

Beaumont and other C.W.A. people concede that employees will be trained for jobs not only inside Bell but elsewhere in U.S. industry, marking one of the first times in labor history that a company has agreed to give people broad skills for careers instead of techniques for specific tasks. Says Phillip DeLong, manager of media relations for A T & T: "We're not talking about job protection, but employment protection."

Fifty-three percent of the Bell operating companies' employees are women, who still tend to cluster in such jobs as operators and clerks; few have jobs as splicers or in other crafts. Says Beaumont: "That's because very few women receive any education in basic electronics and electricity. Guys got that in school. Most of us didn't." Women will now be encouraged to go into those fields and develop their skills.

The contract also sets out a new formula for employees forced to quit because of the Jan. 1 breakup of the Bell System or who lose their jobs because of automation. For example, ousted workers with 25 years of seniority can get up to 45 weeks' pay. Other provisions will delay for 36 months any pay reductions that come about because of the divestiture or job reassignment. Still another one will allow for up to $2,500 in relocation pay for displaced people. In short, the new contract is really trying to prepare workers for more and more automation and for the day when the giant Bell System will cease to exist. sb This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.