Phone Companies Preparing For Strike

Four regional telephone companies are readying management to take over operations in the event of a strike by more than 164,000 unionized workers at midnight Saturday.

“We are not very optimistic about reaching an agreement before Saturday,” said Doug Thompson, a Communications Workers of America official monitoring the union’s talks with Bell Atlantic in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

The other companies are Ameritech, Bell South and Pacific Telesis. All are holding separate talks with the CWA.

Three other regional phone companies could be affected by a strike soon.

The contract for 40,000 union workers at US West expires on Aug. 12 and GTE of the Southwest’s contract with about 5,600 workers expires on Aug. 15.