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The Hartford Courant Dan Haar column [The Hartford Courant](Hartford Courant (CT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 24--Frontier Communications is hiring more than 300 new unionized workers as it takes on the wireline business of AT&T in Connecticut with an expected closing of the $2 billion deal today. Many of the new employees replace members of the Communications Workers of America that retired since the summer of 2013, a spate of exits that accelerated after Frontier and AT&T announced their deal in December. But many others are new, in technical support, sales, construction and two operations returning to Connecticut: dispatch and a customer call center. It's all part of a honeymoon agreement between CWA Local 1298 and Frontier, a Stamford-based company that specializes in local phone and other telecom services in several U.S. regions. Frontier will have five area offices in Connecticut, including its northeast headquaerters in New Haven, the hometown of the old southern New England Telecommunications Corp., which in 1998 merged into Texas-based SBC Corp.; SBC later acquired AT&T and took on the AT&T name. CWA has about 2,100 members at AT&T who are moving to Frontier, down from a total of 2,348 last year. Frontier has agreed to restore that larger number immediately. The hiring is well underway including, for example, training at the new dispatch center in New Haven. To sweeten the deal further, Frontier agreed to hire an additional 75 union employees in specific positions by April 17, including 35 at the dispatch center. It's been a wild ride for CWA and its firebrand president, Bill Henderson, who fought AT&T repeatedly over job eliminations and the removal of work from Connecticut, including the old dispatch operation in Meriden. Local 1298 was the last CWA unit in the United States to reach a contract with AT&T, holding out under an expired pact for more than a year until mid-2013. Henderson saves some of his harshest expletives for AT&T's outsourcing of line repair work to non-union, out-of-state contractors, contrasting that with AT&T. "Frontier says 'That's not the way we do business, we're going to let union members do this work,'" Henderson said. "AT&T, to maximize their profits, they looked at service and overhead. Now Frontier said 'No, our focus is on service.'" Brigid Smith, a Frontier spokeswoman, said the company values the idea of local call responses. "When you say 'It's snowing, my line is down,' they'll say 'Oh my God it is snowing,. We'll be right out there.'" It wasn't an easy courtship. In May, after tense talks with Frontier and AT&T, Henderson declared that Frontier was set to eliminate as many as 1,000 jobs. He vowed to block the sale, even traveling to Washington, D.C. to meet with officials there. Frontier said at the time it was a misunderstanding. Henderson now agrees that it was, and he blames AT&T. Separately, Frontier is taking on about management and non-union employees from AT&T, which retains its wireless business in Connecticut as well as some other commercial services. AT&T was never able to successfully bundle wireless with in-home wireline services. If history is a guide, the CWA-Frontier partnership will face difficult tests. Frontier, with $5 billion in annual sales, now adding $1.25 billion from AT&T, said in December it will pare $200 million a year from expenses -- not by layoffs, but rather by operating more efficiently. Frontier agreed to extend the union contract by two years to 2018 and gave stock worth more than $500 to each CWA member. Frontier must keep up with fierce competition from cable operators Comcast and Cox, among others, at a time when many households are abandoning their old basic wireline telephone service, and many others are bundling their phone service with cable TV and Internet, through the cable providers. The cable firms haven't exactly held the line on prices, so consumers will have to hope that Frontier is able to force the issue with its combination of service and self-declared efficiency. That's easier said than done at a time of costly technology wars and rising TV programming costs, especially for sports. Frontier is buying the U-verse bundled franchise of phone, Internet and TV in Connecticut but will not use the U-verse name for all three services. Residential customers will see no rise in prices for at least three years under approval conditions of the state's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. And, Smith said, customers do not need to make any other changes, such as switching out their AT&T cable boxes and routers. The old days when SNET had 6,500 CWA members saturating the state will never return, of course, but the hope at the union offices in Hamden is that the shrinking of membership is over. That depends on Frontier's ability to succeed, starting today, using a local service model that AT&T was slowly dismantling. ___ (c)2014 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) Visit The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) at www.courant.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |