In My Opinion: U S WEST - Taking the Low Road to Ruin

To say that U S WEST is out of step with the rest of the telecommunications industry is a wild understatement. U S WEST isn't merely out of step, it's marching in the opposite direction, back in time to an era of disruptive, confrontational labor relations, while the other companies are headed into the 21st century.

CWA bargained with the rest of the Baby Bells this year, as well as with GTE of the Southwest, AT&T, and Lucent Technologies. None of these profitable companies even thought to demand contract-breaking concessions from their workers, let alone provoke a strike that would derail their plans for growth and competitive opportunity in today's dynamic information industry - not to mention, to poison relations with their employees and the union that would harm the company for years to come.

Provoke a strike is exactly what U S WEST has done, and it is prolonging it with the fervor of a Frank Lorenzo to try to bludgeon workers into accepting terms that would gut their contract protections, worsen job conditions that already are bordering on horrendous, and even threaten their families' health security.

The last time CWA telecommunications members faced such a calculated, in-your-face challenge that made a strike so unavoidable, it ruined the company for years. It was 1989, at NYNEX. The issue was a flat, uncompromising demand from the wealthy employer that workers must swallow huge and escalating costs for their family's health coverage.

That strike lasted for 17 weeks, but the aftermath lasted a lot longer. Workers long remembered their sense of betrayal by the employer, and they'll never forget Gerry Horgan, the striker who was run down and killed by a scab on the picket line. NYNEX finally withdrew the unacceptable take-back demand. But by then, top management was being swept out the door and the company was looking at a long economic slide. Over the following nine months, the full impact of the strike and the creation of an embittered workforce was vividly apparent to investors as the stock price plummeted 27 percent. It took three years for NYNEX earnings to once again reach pre-strike levels.

It looks like U S WEST is on the same low road of greed and corporate arrogance. Its confrontational strategy is nothing short of immoral in terms of the sacrifice of 35,000 hard-working employees and their families, forced on strike to defend their health benefits, job standards and basic contract protections. U S WEST's actions also are irresponsible to the customers who already receive the shoddiest service in the country thanks to its refusal to upgrade and properly maintain its phone network and to hire enough people, as well as to the shareholders who deserve better vision and leadership from management. Evidence that U S WEST wanted to force a confrontation is clear. When the contract expiration and strike deadline was reached, the company had failed to provide basic information requested by CWA on the key issues - the company's pet "pay for performance" quota plan for network and service technicians, and overtime levels, the hottest issue among the workers. This lack of response by the company alone made it impossible to reach settlement and resulted in the current strike, and it is the subject of federal unfair labor practice charges by CWA against U S WEST for not bargaining in good faith to reach agreement.

But that's not all. U S WEST was - and still is - demanding terms so unreasonable that it sounds incredible in 1998 from an Information Age corporation: Elimination of overtime premiums after eight hours worked in a day and 49 hours in a week. Shifting of health benefit costs to maintain coverage in the managed care health network that CWA helped negotiate and that saved the company $4 million in 1996-97. A pay freeze for technicians, with any future raises geared to job quotas set and changed at will by the company. Weakening of layoff protections, and more use of subcontractors and temporary workers at substandard rates and conditions.

U S WEST's response to the workers' major issue of abusive forced overtime was a proposed "limit" in 1999 that could require every employee to work 65 hours - or 9.5 hours a day, seven days every week. And after weeks of "bargaining," the company's very first proposal on the fundamental issues of wage and pension improvements only came a few hours before the contract deadline - and even then was presented in sidebar talks and not at the official negotiating table.

Without question, this company wanted a showdown. The only explanation U S WEST has offered for taking this path, while the rest of the industry has chosen a higher road, is that supposedly it is a "small" company that is more vulnerable to competition than the rest.

U S WEST is a $26 billion corporation with profits of $1.25 billion last year and a CEO whose multimillion-dollar compensation package is right up there with the other big boys. U S WEST is not small - but right now observers throughout the industry agree: it certainly thinks that way.