Phone Negotiations Go Down To The Wire

Negotiators for US West and the union representing 33,000 company employees worked against the clock Friday on a new contract, with the weeklong extension of their old contract due to expire today.

“Talks have been fruitful,” US West spokesman Jeff Garrett said Friday, adding that he is confident there will be no strike.

On Wednesday, the phone company’s employees gave official notice that they would walk off their jobs if a new contract is not reached by 9 a.m. today, when their 72-hour contract extension expires. The move was mostly seen as a bargaining tactic on the part of the union, Garrett said.

“We want to avoid that at all costs,” he said. “We plan on going all night tonight to meet the 9 o’clock deadline.”

Still, Garrett said some 15,000 US West managers in 14 states are on standby “in the unlikely event” that workers decide to strike when the extension expires.

“They could be deployed at a moment’s notice to staff those jobs that were held by union employees,” he said.