Bell Atlantic Strike Ends on Third Day with Two-Year Agreement.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Aug. 11--A strike by 73,000 Bell Atlantic Corp. employees ended quickly on its third day yesterday, with the union claiming it had won back work given to outside contractors as well as limits on mandatory overtime.

Both sides hailed the two-year agreement, announced at mid-morning, as a breakthrough in labor-management relations that would strengthen Bell Atlantic in the increasingly competitive telecommunications industry.

Morton Bahr, president of the 600,000-member Communications Workers of America union, which represents more than half of Bell Atlantic's 142,000 employees, praised Ivan Seidenberg, the company's vice chairman and chief executive, for stepping in and making an early settlement possible.

Industry analysts called the change in Bell Atlantic's labor relations, which has been prickly in the past, a positive development.

Said Lawrence Darrow, vice president of BlackRock Inc., the investment-management subsidiary of PNC Bank Corp.: "Being able to meet customers' needs for good service and a complete telecommunications package -- local phone service, long-distance, Internet access and data transfer -- is more important than saving a relatively small amount on employee compensation.

"Erosion in market share caused by poor service would hurt more than missing their quarterly earnings goal by a few cents per share," he said.

Bell Atlantic shares, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, fell to a nine-month low on Monday, the second day of the strike, then rebounded on news of the settlement. The shares closed yesterday at $41.75, up 56.3 cents on heavier-than-average volume of 2.53 million shares.

The Bell Atlantic system, which stretches from Maine to Virginia, will have all operations running normally by the end of this week, company spokeswoman Sharon Shaffer said.

The union said it agreed to participate in joint labor-management committees working to make the company more efficient.

In return, the company agreed to end several rapidly growing outsourcing initiatives, including closing a large nonunion customer account center in Hampton, Va., and phasing out use of an outside contractor in a new service that manages telecommunications systems for large companies.

CWA members will handle work related to a wide variety of future telecommunications services to businesses and homes, "things we can't even think about now. We will have jurisdiction over all new generation of technology," Bahr said.

The new contract won't mean an immediate end to the use of independent residential telephone installers, depicted as unskilled boobs in CWA television commercials during the last round of contract talks.

"We're fighting that through arbitration," said Jim Byrne, a member of the CWA international staff from Philadelphia.

But he said the new agreement would give the CWA jurisdiction over work related to most new-business and residential work on Internet-access and data-transmission lines.

Donald J. Sacco, Bell Atlantic's executive vice president for human resources, said outside companies would be limited to special sales-related and technical situations where Bell employees lack the required expertise.

The agreement would put new limits on overtime, assuring workers of two weekend days off at least twice a month. It also would provide a broader range of reasons why overtime can be refused.

Wages would increase 3.8 percent, effective last Saturday, and an additional four percent next August. The agreement calls for increases of 11 percent to 20 percent in company contributions to pension benefit funds.

The financial issues were settled weeks ago, Bahr said. The strike was over use of contractors to replace CWA employees and excluding the union workers from new products and services.

Pete Catucci, a veteran CWA vice president in Washington, said the quick settlement was the result of "a change in attitude in upper-level management, a new desire to have a productive work force, and a degree of decency. For the first time, they listened to our arguments."

The driving force behind that change, he said, was Bell Atlantic's new CEO, Seidenberg, who rose through the ranks over 30 years to become chairman of Nynex Corp., the New York telephone company that merged with Bell Atlantic last year.

Vincent J. Maisano of Philadelphia, vice president of the CWA district that includes Pennsylvania and Delaware, was the union's chief negotiator.

He said the turning point was the show of force the rank-and-file members put forth in rallies Monday morning.

Until then, he said, "I don't know that the company thought this outsourcing matter was of such importance to us, that we were ready to put up a fight."

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