Phil Padgett Dies at Age 62

Phil C. Padgett, who guide CWA’s Western Electric Installation bargaining unit through the rocky shoals of Bell System divestiture in the mid-1980s, died on Aug. 24 in Palm Valley, Fla., near St. Augustine.

Padgett, 62, retired in 1991 as an administrative assistant to the vice president of CWA’s communications and technologies bargaining unit, which by then included the Installers. In the 1960s and 1970s, before CWA secured national bargaining with AT&T and the Bell System, the nationwide and highly-mobile installation workforce was often the unit that CWA leadership chose to set the pattern in collective bargaining.

Padgett was elected the union’s Western Electric installation director in 1977, a position he held through the 1983-84 breakup of the Bell System. By 1986, Padgett was named an administrative assistant to the vice president of AT&T Technologies, which eventually became communications and technologies.

He got his start as an installer with Western Electric in 1956, rising through the union ranks and eventually becoming president of CWA Local 3290 in Atlanta, a position he held until his election as national director of the installation unit.

Survivors include three daughters. They are Wanda Langford, Bethany Pabalan and Lesli Huggett.