It has been a busy year for the major U.S. telcos--AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), and CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL)--and their wireline union workers.
Two of the main unions--including the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)--that represent wireline employees are either in the midst of negotiating new contracts or have finalized deals.
As we point out in our new feature, the road to ratification is hardly easy.
With their traditional TDM-based voice service revenues in continual decline, telcos are asking their union workers for various concessions on items such as pension, health care and sick time.
Take AT&T, for instance. After being threatened with a strike, AT&T West reached a tentative deal with CWA District 9, which covers more than 17,000 wireline employees in California and Nevada.
Meanwhile, others like Hawaiian Telecom overcame a long battle with its 700 union workers when the IBEW ratified a deal with the telco last December.
Of course, there are still various telcos such as CenturyLink, Frontier (Nasdaq: FTR) and Verizon that are in the midst of hammering out agreements with their union workers.
FierceTelecom is chronicling all of the activity and will continue to update readers as negotiations continue between the CWA, IBEW and wireline telcos.--Sean
Click here to read our latest feature, The battle for union contracts: AT&T, Hawaiian Telcom, others hash out wireline benefits