Resolution Expected Soon in Bell Strike

NEW YORK — Bell Atlantic customers were told to use phone books and credit cards instead of calling directory assistance or making collect calls Monday, the first business day of a strike.

About 73,000 workers stayed off the job in 12 Eastern states and Washington.

Major contract talks in New York and Washington continued during the second day of a strike over a new three-year contract. The main issue is the company’s use of nonunion workers for some jobs, especially those involving new, Internet-based technology.

“It is important to our workers to move into those areas,” said Candice Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America, which called the strike along with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Company and union officials said they believed their differences could be worked out soon, and both sides want to avert a lengthy strike like the one Nynex workers staged for 17 weeks in 1989. Nynex and Bell Atlantic merged last year.

Most phone service is automated and was unaffected Monday, Bell Atlantic said. Company spokesman Eric Rabe said 23,500 managers, working 12-hour shifts, had filled in for striking workers.

But he said that if the strike continued, there could be delays in paying bills by phone, installations and repairs.

“We want people to use the phone book instead of calling directory assistance, and credit cards instead of making collect calls,” Rabe said.

Realtor Lindsay Johnston in Philadelphia said: “Everyone has a cellular phone these days. Technology is probably going to make this strike a little more palatable.”

Pickets lines, from Maine to Virginia, began going up Sunday after the contract expired at 12:01 a.m.

There was some bottle throwing and an egg was hurled at a Bell Atlantic truck leaving a New York garage, where about 200 workers were picketing Monday. Three Bell Atlantic employees were charged Monday with damaging company vehicles and telephone wires in the Bronx. A fourth man was charged with cracking the windshield of a Bell Atlantic employee’s private car in Queens, N.Y.

Eight strikers outside a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Bell Atlantic facility were arrested for allegedly blocking trucks leaving the building and were charged with disorderly conduct.

In Charleston, W.Va., several hundred union workers rallied outside two Bell Atlantic offices. As motorists honked and waved, worker Jeanette Bowen, 28, said, “We have a lot of friends.”

Steve Marcus, a Bell Atlantic spokesman, said the company was offering higher benefits and wages.

Rabe said: “We have about 45,000 more union jobs than we had a few years ago. We’re certainly not giving away their jobs. They have certain protections in their contracts, and that’s all agreed to.”

The strike involves workers in Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington and part of Greenwich, Conn.