Oct. 2, 2002 – More than 300 business office and technical service employees of Innovative Telephone and the territory's two cable-television companies, all owned by Innovative Communications Corp., went on strike Wednesday, setting up pickets at various locations on St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John.
On St. Croix, more than a hundred phone and cable-TV employees picketed at the Sunny Isles business office and central offices in Estates Mon Bijou, Mount Pleasant and downtown Christiansted. About 30 were on the picket line Wednesday morning outside ICC's Estate Diamond business office complex. By mid-afternoon, as temperatures soared into the upper 80s, they continued to wave banners and chant, saying they hoped to return to the bargaining table.
On St. Thomas, some 40 workers were picketing in the rain Wednesday morning at the ICC headquarters on Beltjen Road, and others were demonstrating at the Innovative service vehicle facility by Tutu Park Mall and at the telephone center across from Four Winds Plaza.
On St. John, three phone company employees were on the picket line in front of the trailer that serves as the company's business office in Cruz Bay. While there was rain on St. Thomas, the sun was beating down strongly on St. John.
Innovative Telephone's supervisors sat in Wednesday at the call panels in the absence of the striking operators, Thomas J. Dunn, company public relations director, said Wednesday evening. "We are deploying supervisors into operators' positions, and so far it's working smoothly and we're meeting our customers' needs," he said.
Dunn said he did not know whether supervisors also filled in for striking installers and service technicians.
There were reports of customers' inability to obtain new service or repairs, but the telephone and cable televisions systems continued to function largely as normal.
ICC's contract with the United Steelworkers Union had expired at midnight Monday, according to a release put out Tuesday by Innovative Telephone. The union workers remained on the job Tuesday but at ratification meetings they "overwhelmingly voted to reject Innovative's final offer," Randolph Allen, Steelworkers international staff representative, said Tuesday night.
Adrian LaBennett, general manager of both St. Croix Innovative Cable TV and St. Thomas-St. John Innovative Cable TV, and the stepson of ICC owner Jeffrey Prosser, stood outside the Estate Diamond complex in a three-piece suit, hands in his pockets, observing the pickets Wednesday around 9:30 a.m. Asked for comment, he said he would not say anything.
St. Croix lineman Harold Brathwaite, a 23-year phone company veteran who started out working summers as a student for the former V.I. Telephone Corp. — Vitelco — on St. Thomas, said most of the employees have 15-20 years of service, and "all we want is … a good pension." In the last negotiations, in 1999, management agreed to set up a 401K plan, but Innovative did not offer any matching funds, he said.
Signs of community support
Brathwaite said the pickets were seeing a lot of community support Wednesday. People passing by would "blow their horns and shake our hands," he said, and the demonstrators received cold drinks and fresh fruit from O'Neale's Trucking, cold drinks from Sen. Alicia "Chucky" Hansen's office and, at the Sunny Isle site, two bags of fresh sweet buns from a passing motorist.
One of the St. John pickets, Evans Doway, an eight-year employee of Vitelco/Innovative Telephone, said the Cruz Bay picket line went up at 7:30 a.m.
Doway, a splicer, carried a sign that originally read "We do our best — yeah, right!" Over the word "we" was written "They" — a reference to Innovative.
Asked about what he understood to be happening on St. Croix and St. Thomas, Doway said, "They're all standing together. So, we're gonna get what we want, or we're gonna stay out here."
Another of the St. John pickets, veteran business office representative Yvette Powell, said the last job action against Vitelco was in 1977 — back when many of today's phone company employees were children.
Powell said customers had been coming up to the trailer on Wednesday, "but they just ask us what's going on."
One phone subscriber got a break as a result of the conflict. Taxi driver Wesley Thomas said he went to the office on Tuesday to settle a bill because Innovative was about to cut off his telephone for non-payment. But nobody was available to take his payment — "The girl said there was a meeting, so I couldn't get in," he said.
Unaware of the strike, "I came in this morning," Thomas said on Wednesday. "The office was closed, but the girl took my money anyway. I was blessed."
Cable TV does not have a full-time office on St. John; business and technical personnel commute from St. Thomas several times a week. The pickets outside the trailer said while they are telephone workers, they were representing both the cable TV and phone companies.
Retirement benefits a key issue
St. Croix grievance officer Catherine Scott, a member of the union negotiating team, said Innovative's chief negotiator, Jeff Frazier, who was brought in from the mainland, made it clear across the negotiating table on Monday night that Innovative was not unable to increase benefits, but that it was unwilling to do so. "He assured us that he was going to be on the plane the next day," she said, adding that the bargaining session went until 1 a.m. Tuesday.
"They just put it on the table and said take it," said Ida Cruz-Galvan who joined Vitelco 25 years ago on St. Thomas, working there for 11 years before returning to her native St. Croix. Her sister is also a Innovative employee and she noted that many of those on the picket lines have at least one other family member employed by the company.
"We don't want to stop business. We are not going to destroy property. We just want to work and be rewarded for our dedicated service," Cruz-Galvan, a customer service representative, said. "We give the company our best. What else do they want?"
Jean Marie Ramsey-Murrain, who joined Vitelco 21 years ago as a janitor and has worked her way up to customer service representative, said, "I don't think we've asked for much over the years. We just need a better pension plan and a better medical plan."
Antoinette Rampersad, the local Steelworkers treasurer, was diagnosed with a degenerative disability three years ago, and she said a good medical plan is important. Noting that many Innovative employees have nearly 30 years of service and are looking toward retirement, she also said Innovative's fight against better pension benefits runs to age discrimination.
The only official public comment from ICC or its telephone or cable TV subsidiaries was a brief "attention customers" advisory circulated to the news media on Tuesday. In it, Innovative Telephone's president, Samuel Ebbesen, said there was "limited staff today at the St. Thomas and [St.] Croix business offices and customer service centers." Further, he said, "workers are meeting today with their union leaders to decide whether or not to ratify the new agreement."
Shortages of materials cited
Some took that to mean that employees had not reported for work, although no strike was called until midnight Tuesday. However, a knowledgeable telephone company employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Innovative officials were not letting drivers get to the company's service trucks on Tuesday because of concerns about possible sabotage.
The employee also said that because of outstanding sums owed vendors, Innovative must pay cash for materials, including such things as new tires for its service trucks, and that this has hampered service operations.
St. Croix's Brathwai
te similarly said that over the last year, warehouse stocks have dwindled, leaving a shortage of needed supplies. And other St. Croix installers said the supply stock on board their vehicles lacks basic everyday materials such as phone jacks, protectors, ground wire, tan inside wire and black outside drop wire.
Brathwaite also charged that Innovative Telephone management has been reducing the number of unionized workers through attrition. "They are not hiring on the union level; they just merged in cable TV employees," he said. "They are just hiring and paying high-level staff. When we apply for those positions, we are being told that we don't qualify."
Innovative's final contract offer was a three-year pact covering telephone and cable service representatives, operators, cashiers, line workers, cable splicers, installers, key system technicians and janitors. On Tuesday, the Steelworkers' Allen said non-wage money issues, including pension and medical benefits, along with a management proposal to hire new phone and cable workers at lower-tier wage scales, were unacceptable to the union members. "Salary is not a major issue," he said.
Allen said the union is ready to return to the bargaining table and the workers are willing to return to the job if Innovative is willing to resume negotiations.
According to Innovative's Dunn, the phone company bargained in good faith and had remained willing to talk with the union representatives up to the time of the strike.
Shaun A. Pennington, Judi Shimel and Karen D. Williams contributed to this report.
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