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Serious Take-Back Demands Force Strike By 35,000 Against U S WEST

CWA members across the fourteen states of U S WEST territory are standing strong in their fight for fairness, despite the company's campaign of intimidation and deception.



Picket lines went up early on Sunday, Aug. 16, over company take-back demands that would destroy basic contract protections, shift health care costs, and continue abusive levels of forced overtime among service reps and technicians throughout the region. "U S WEST has tried to drive its own agenda of major contract-breaking concessions, and hasn't even addressed the contract improvements that our members want," said District 7 Vice President Sue Pisha at CWA News press time, more than a week after the walkout by 35,000 U S WEST workers began.



Among take-back demands are elimination of overtime premiums after eight hours a day and elimination of all double-time, weakening of seniority protection during layoffs, shifting of health premium costs to workers, more subcontracting and use of temporaries, and removal of limits on monitoring. The company also is demanding to freeze base wages for outside plant technicians and peg any raises to performance quotas set, and changed at will, solely by management.



CWA President Morton Bahr stated to the news media that U S WEST's tactics show it to be "totally out of step with the mainstream of the telecommunications industry," terming it "a renegade." CWA settled this year with all the other major companies on labor contracts recognizing the vital role of their skilled, productive workers in generating enormous profits and giving them a competitive edge based on high-quality service, he noted.



Bahr immediately authorized funding for a major TV, radio and print advertising campaign and a wide-ranging corporate campaign to gather support from regulators, the investment community, lawmakers and the entire labor movement. The AFL-CIO is mobilizing support from affiliates and some 1.5 million union families in the region, using the effort of its Strategic Approaches Committee and field service operations.



Bahr also flew to Denver on August 25 to join strikers on the picket lines and give them the pledge that, "All of CWA is behind you, all of organized labor is behind you." Since the strike began, U S WEST has refused to budge on issues that caused the strike, instead engaging in "a campaign of deceit and deliberate misrepresentation of the issues to the news media and public," said Bahr.



The company has sought to break strikers' spirits by announcing it would terminate payments for health coverage on Aug. 31. CWA has informed members about their federal "COBRA" rights - coverage cannot be dropped for at least 60 days - and assured all workers honoring picket lines that the union will guarantee necessary health-care protection for their families, at no additional cost, for the duration of the strike. U S WEST was never serious about reaching a settlement, said Pisha. Despite repeated requests for specific information regarding the company's pay proposal for technicians, overtime levels and subcontracting, CWA bargainers never received the necessary data to bargain on these key issues. "That's a major reason we're on strike," she said, noting that CWA has filed unfair labor practice charges against U S WEST for failing to bargaining in good faith.



"U S WEST engineered this strike and is perpetuating it to the detriment of its customers, employees and shareholders," Pisha said, citing as further evidence that the company did not even make an initial wage and pension offer until a few hours before the strike deadline. Even that offer was made informally and not proposed at the bargaining table.