Qwest disconnects 110 CWA members in Portland

On May 20, Qwest Communications managers called 110 union workers at the company’s “Small Business Care Center” to an assembly in the long-closed cafeteria of their downtown Portland office building. There, Qwest vice president Jeffrey Clark gave them the news: Their jobs are to be eliminated in August, their work to be transferred to Denver, Colo., St. Paul, Minn., and Phoenix, Ariz.

Of the six small business units in Qwest’s 14-state territory, two others besides Portland are also closing. But at the two other locations, workers may transfer to Qwest consumer units in the same city. Only in Portland will the employees be tossed.

The announcement came a month after a separate local Qwest closure was announced — the company’s pay phone operation, with 40 Portland employees. Qwest is leaving the pay phone business, selling the operation to FSH Communications, LLC. FSH is a new company formed by Don Goens, a former Qwest employee, expressly to buy the unit from Qwest.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901 believes Goens is likely to contract out the work. Qwest vice president Ken Dunn explained the sale in a press statement: Qwest had spent the previous two years examining its operations “to maximize the profitability of our core operations,” and pay phones were said to be outside the core.

A third, even larger closure may be on the way: Qwest is reportedly mulling whether to close its Portland consumer call center, which employs 245 union workers. A decision is expected by mid-June.

“I have to really question whether Qwest intends to stay in Oregon at all,” said Madelyn Elder, president of the 1,300-member Local 7901, headquartered in Portland.

More than a third of the small business call center workers showed up at a May 27 meeting called by the union to to discuss what to do, most of them wearing red CWA T-shirts or blue union windbreakers.

Far from being demoralized, the workers seemed ready to fight to keep their jobs, and overwhelmingly, they vowed to stick together.

It was because of their union contract that the workers got 90 days notice of the layoffs. And the union contract guarantees them a severance package that could amount to up $1,100 for every year they worked for the company. As many as 40 will have the option of keeping their jobs by moving to Denver, and under the union contract, they would get relocation assistance from the company.

CWA Vice President John Thompson went to the May 25 Qwest shareholders meeting and met with Qwest boss Dick Notebaert to plead for the Portland workers. The union hopes to persuade the company to alter its decision, or at least keep the consumer call center and allow the displaced workers to transfer into it.

But Elder told the workers they should have no illusions about the consumer call center. “Call centers are the sweatshops of the 21st century, and I don’t think there’s anybody who works in one who would dispute that.”

In reality, Elder said, even the Small Business Care Center is a sales call center, not a care center.

The Portland small business care center was said by management to be the least productive judging by the number of calls answered and the amount of sales. But Elder argues that’s because the Portland office has more senior employees — and workers at other centers have been transferring the more complicated calls to Portland.

Nearly half the workers in the Portland unit have over 20 years — meaning they’ve been with the company since the days of the Bell System. “We feel like our office is being eliminated BECAUSE of seniority,” said one worker.

In fact, according to workers, Qwest VP Clark had acknowledged at the assembly that seniority was one factor in the closure decision.

Qwest spokesperson Stacia Dahl told the Labor Press that the closure is meant to “enhance customer service,” which it would do because of the greater efficiency of concentrating the work in three “megacenters.”

Elder says she questions what “efficiencies” could result from a decision to fire experienced employees and train new ones. Wages top out at $20 an hour after five years, so the extra seniority didn’t mean higher wage costs, just more vacation time.

Even though all the workers expect to be gone by September, company managers will continue to fire workers for not meeting sales quotas.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.