News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Lightning knocked out Martha Yates' phone on Wednesday, August 19. She probably won't get it fixed until sometime in September, because phone network technicians for U.S. West are on strike.
A handful of managers with some field experience are trying to handle orders and repairs.
"I was told they'd do their best to get to it and it wouldn't be that day," Yates said.
When she called again August 24, Yates got a recording saying her repair date would be September 11. A third phone call brought the good news that her phone might be fixed a little earlier than that - but not in the next few days.
That's frustrating for Yates and other U.S. West customers.
"We are using our cell phone at huge expense to us just for minimal outgoing calls," Yates said. "I just want them to settle the labor issue and get back up."
Yates' situation is no surprise to Doug Bermel, one of two Sisters-area technicians currently on the picket line.
"The ones that will be hurt most is the public," Bermel said.
As members of the Communications Workers of America, Bermel and maintainance technician Pat Seile have a four-hour picket assignment on Hood Avenue each day. They divide their time into two-hour morning and afternoon shifts.
According to the striking network technicians, the key issue in the dispute with U.S. West is mandatory overtime, where junior personnel are routinely required to put in as many as 20 hours of overtime to meet "the needs of the service."
"They're working a minimum of 60 hours," Bermel said. "They don't have weekends, they don't see their families. What the union has been trying to do is get U.S. West to hire more people and they don't want to do it."
Bermel is a cable splicer for U.S. West, with about 30 years of experience in the phone business. Seile, too, has 30 years of service under his belt. According to Bermel, it takes about five years for a technician to become proficient and productive at his job. He says that U.S. West isn't hiring younger people to replace those at the ends of their careers.
"They should be training and hiring younger people and they're not doing it," he said.
Other contentious issues, Bermel said, include proposed incentive programs that would base pay on performance standards. According to Bermel and Seile, the union believes the company is setting unattainable marks to be met in order for workers to get 100 percent pay.
"What they're looking for is to be able to sign off work as fast as you can," Seile said.
Meeting a day's quota of jobs done can be tough in a rural area where there's drive time just to get to jobs, Seile noted.
"They look at us all the same whether you're in the city or in the country," Seile said.
"The company is setting the bar," said Sisters resident Mark Mills, who works for the phone company mostly at Crooked River Ranch. "In the past, we've had problems with the company's bar setting."
The strikers said lower-level management has already seen heavy pressure from incentive plans that force them to work many hours of overtime. The union is also unhappy with what they perceive as a deterioration in helath benefits.
And, they say, U.S. West customers are getting less than the best service.
"We've seen what they've done to their management staff," Mills said. "We've seen what they've done to their customers regularly. Now they're trying to do it to us. I'm glad I have a union."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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