Phone Talks Still Hung Up in Second Day of Walkout

The strike against Pacific Bell in California and two other “Baby Bells” that supply local phone service to much of the Atlantic coast entered its second day Monday--normally the week’s busiest day--with informal talks taking place but no signs pointing toward settlements.

No formal negotiations between the two sides are scheduled.

The automated networks continued working as usual at Pacific Bell, at NYNEX’s phone companies in New York and New England and at Bell Atlantic, whose subsidiaries serve the Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia.

But customers still encountered aggravating delays for operator assistance, postponement of scheduled installations and, according to union spokesmen, delays of a week or more to obtain appointments for routine equipment repairs that normally take 24 hours.

There were also isolated incidents of shortened tempers on picket lines.

In the San Fernando Valley, pickets blocked vans carrying management workers who had been flown in from Oakland and other vehicles carrying nonunion workers. At one point, several vehicles inched ahead until they nudged the blocking strikers, who responded by hammering on their hoods with picket signs.

The most effective roadblock proved to be a picket’s 150-pound Newfoundland dog, which dozed in a key driveway. The dog wore a sign saying: “Pac Bell’s gone to the dogs.”

In Boston, police arrested a dozen striking workers of New England Telephone, a NYNEX subsidiary, for allegedly blocking the exits and driveway of a company facility.

Angry workers in Manhattan shouted slogans and curses in front of buildings used by New York Telephone.

John Garcia, a Pacific Bell service technician on picket duty in Burbank, predicted that such incidents would increase if a settlement failed to come soon.

“It’s going to turn ugly,” Garcia said. “You shouldn’t turn your back on your fellow workers.”

Gary Gonzales, a picket-line monitor representing the striking Communications Workers of America, emphasized that violence and service disruptions are not union policy but added: “People are not too happy. You try to control the workers’ fervor, but there’s only so much you can do.”

The CWA represents more than 41,000 employees at Pacific Bell and another 750 at the Reno area’s Nevada Bell, the other phone company of the parent organization, Pacific Telesis. There, a handful of picketing CWA members vowed to stay off the job until contract demands are met.

The CWA has been joined by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in the strikes at NYNEX and Bell Atlantic, which is based in Philadelphia.

In San Diego, the strike by Local 9509 of the Communications Workers of America has resulted in about 6,000 Pacific Bell employees not reporting for work. Doug Woodbury, who represents the San Diego members of CWA, said he saw no immediate end to the strike.

“My people want to go back to work,” he said. “They like their jobs, but they feel they’re being cheated. The company is nickel-and-diming us. So, who’s got the power at this point? Well, I sure don’t feel the company is in a position to take on a strike right now.”

Woodbury said the immediate effect on consumers in the San Diego area has been to delay 411 information calls and make it “all but impossible” to get a new number connected, an old one disconnected or a phone repaired.

He said the strike has affected operators, clerical help, inside technicians, outside technicians, service representatives and engineers. Woodbury said San Diego CWA members were most upset about issues affecting medical benefits.

Michael Runzler, a spokesman for the San Diego office of Pacific Bell, said “the watchword (for the consumer) is patience.” He said about 55 managerial supervisors, some from San Diego, others imported from as far away as San Ramon, had been brought in to handle 411 calls and calls to the operator.

“They began to arrive Sunday morning, and they’re (prepared to put) in 12-hour days 6 days a week,” Runzler said. “While it might take longer to get through--you might get a busy signal or have to wait a while--you will get through.”

Runzler said “the public should know” that 911 calls are not affected by the work stoppage, nor are “routine calls that you yourself happen to make. Because we’re so highly automated, those go through without any difference.”

Runzler said the strike had been “stressful--we all wish it were over right now,” but he added that managerial fill-ins had “begun to get the hang of” manning the 411 and operator callers.

Meanwhile, inside phone company facilities on both coasts, management personnel struggled to keep up with the growing volume of calls and customer requests.

All 17,000 of Pacific Bell’s nonunion personnel have strike assignments, said spokeswoman Lissa Zanville.

Stepping into the front-line jobs is not necessarily an easy task for them, some managers are finding. A harassed operator fielding directory-assistance calls displayed confusion over whether a particular city’s numbers were available on her computer.

“It’s loads of fun,” she lamented.

Adding fuel to the picket line militancy was a growing awareness that automation limits the strikers’ ability to hurt their employers. At the same time, labor-saving technology jeopardizes many of their technical and clerical jobs.

Larry Beale, the CWA’s chief negotiator who recently reached agreement with Thousand Oaks-based GTE California, the state’s second-largest local phone company, said workers usually assess automation when they consider a strike.

“The people who work in the central (switching) office are more inclined to say, ‘Don’t kid yourself, the system doesn’t run itself,’ ” Beale said. “The systems we have today almost operate themselves--except that if the system starts to get in trouble, it’s so complex that they’re going to have major problems.”

Coincidentally, GTE workers on Monday ratified the tentative agreement achieved July 9 on the eve of a strike. The new contract is retroactive to March 5 and will run until Dec. 17, 1992, GTE spokesman Larry Cox said.

Meanwhile, the CWA’s international president, Morton Bahr, is expected to ask the AFL-CIO’s executive council, which is holding a quarterly meeting today in Chicago, to urge all union members and their families to refuse to pay local phone bills during the strike.

“The companies are still charging for key consumer services that they cannot deliver, like directory service and repair,” said a union source. “We’re saying that’s not fair.”

Major differences in all three strikes center on wages, job security and financing health benefits. The company is asking the workers to assume a greater share of skyrocketing health-care costs, a concept the union adamantly opposes.

William R. Robertson, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said any attempt to increase telephone workers’ health-care contributions “is just another case of greed.” He said unions have won improved health benefits only by accepting lower wage increases in the past.

“The unions had to sacrifice wage increases to support these programs,” Robertson said. “Now, in many, cases employers try to give the appearance that they’re providing this coverage.”

Nearly 157,000 telecommunications workers walked off their jobs over the weekend after contracts expired between the CWA and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and three of the seven regional Bell companies created in 1984 to take over local phone operations from American Telephone & Telegraph. Only customers of Bell South’s phone companies, serving Southeastern states, were spared a strike after a tentative agreement was reached minutes before Saturday’s midnight strike deadline.

Contracts with the three remaining Baby Bells--Ameritech in Chicago, US West in Denver and Southwestern Bell in St. Louis--will expire this Saturday. Their phone companies provide local service throughout much of the rest of the United States.

Times staff writers Michael Granberry, Bob Baker, Hector Tobar and Jonathan Weber and photographer Rick Meyer contributed to this story.