TWO STORIES ON GTE AND BELL ATLANTIC

By Carmelo Ruiz Marrero

The author is a Puerto Rican reporter. These two stories were published in the Jan. 8 1999 issue of the Claridad weekly newspaper. This translation to English, by the author himself, was done on Feb. 3 1999. Ruiz-Marrero can be contacted at: carmelo_ruiz@yahoo.com. Everyone is free to reproduce both stories, as long as Ruiz-Marrero is credited as their author.

GTE AND BELL ATLANTIC: A HISTORY OF ABUSE

GTE, recently bought by Bell Atlantic, has an extensive record of racism, financial irregularities, anti-competitive behavior, abusing its pensioners and turning to dishonest business practices. There’s no reason on Earth to believe that this pattern will somehow vanish and become ancient irrelevant history simply because it has been bought by a larger corporation. After all, Bell Atlantic’s track record is similar or worse:

* In 1993 California state authorities fined GTE $6.4 million for having overbilled its Hispanic customers by $15 a month. The Wall Street Journal reported on April 30 1997 that GTE management ordered its employees to destroy documents related to this scandal.

* After an audit of GTE’s operations in eight American states, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced on March 11 1998 that 36% of the assets that the company reported could not be located or verified. In light of all the debate about the privatization of telecoms in Latin America (Colombia, Brazil, Puerto Rico), one has to ask: What would the advocates of privatization and free markets say if a government agency or public corporation ever showed the financial sloppiness that GTE showed in the aforementioned FCC audit? They would no doubt holler in unison that this only shows how inherently unreliable the public sector is. But when the much-ballyhooed private sector commits these same faults, the right-wing pundits and so-called free thinkers are nowhere to be found.

* The Washington DC federal court recently found GTE guilty of anti-trust violations. Wasn’t private enterprise supposed to be competitive and anti-monopoly, as we’ve been told?

* When the sale of the government-owned Puerto Rico Telephone Company (PRTC) to GTE was formally announced in May 1998, GTE was going through a process of cost-cutting and downsizing. PRTC employees’s fears for their job security are therefore entirely rational.

* Not even pensioners are safe. In 1995 GTE was forced to pay its pensioners $18 million it owed them.

* In August 1992, representative David Noriega, of the Puerto Rico Independence Party (PIP), announced that GTE had sold obsolete and incompatible equipment to the PRTC. The equipment cost $16 million, but the necessary modifications and upgrades raised the total cost to $60 million. The PRTC took GTE to court in order to recover the lost millions, but lost its case and ended up having to pay GTE $5 million. The PR government’s General Accounting Office (Oficina del Contralor) wrote a report on this matter.

What about Bell Atlantic?

A BA employee- who wishes to remain anonymous- told this reporter in 1998 that “Bell Atlantic is an intensely anti-union company with a long history of negotiating contracts and then breaking them”.

When BA bought NYNEX’s cellular telephone subsidiary a few years ago, BA negotiated a collective agreement with its employees. However, the union that represents them had to take a case to the United States Supreme Court in order to force BA to honor its part of the bargain.

In order to obtain authorization to buy the rest of NYNEX in 1997, BA assured the FCC and the public service commissions of several American states that it would honor the collective bargaining agreements of NYNEX workers represented by the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. It only took two months for BA to break its word.

But the workers didn’t just take it. In August 1998 the 73,000 BA employees represented by CWA went on strike. The reasons? BA management was forcing them to do grueling overtime schedules and was also outsourcing work out to non-union contractors. After 48 hours of strike, management was forced to reach an agreement with the union. According to CWA president Morton Bahr, the strike was not about salaries, pensions or health plans, but about the job security of information industry workers in the 21st century.

So, BA owns GTE, and GTE now owns the Puerto Rico Telephone Company. The PRTC union leadership had better get its act together.

BELL ATLANTIC IN NEW YORK: NO GOOD

In 1998 GTE and Bell Atlantic competed with each other over the Puerto Rico Telephone Company (PRTC), a public corporation put up for sale by neoliberal governor Pedro Rosselló. GTE won the competition, but both were winners since only weeks later, BA bought GTE.

So, what lies in store for PRTC customers? The answer to that question is: Hell, according to a November 1998 report in the New York Daily News. Comparative studies by the FCC conclude that BA is the worst phone company as far as customer service is concerned, says the Daily News. BA customers in the Big Apple pay the most for phone service, and are the ones that get the worst service in all USA.

According to the Daily News report, in the twelve-month period that ended in June 1998, BA received almost 4 million complaint calls in New York. Over 576,000 of these callers complained that their initial calls for help were ignored. Over 500,000 of them alleged that their phones malfunctioned for over 24 hours on at least one occasion in those twelve months.

Thanks to BA, New Yorkers have ten times more trouble with their phone lines than the customers of the other four corporate giants that control telephone communications in the United States as of now, February 1999. The city has one malfunction or complaint for every 3.2 lines per year. But in the mostly black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods of West Harlem and South Bronx, there’s one malfunction or complaint for every two lines.

The Daily News story gives its readers a few horror stories from New York phone users, milestones in customer non-satisfaction: Some people inexplicably find themselves sharing their line with other people; an art gallery in Manhattan celebrates its grand opening with no phone or fax, and doesn’t get either until a month and a half later; a day care center in Brooklyn spends eight weeks with no phone; and so on. In the case of the day care center, some BA technicians came one day to examine the malfunction and right after arriving took a two-hour lunch break. (But, aren’t the public sector employees supposed to be the lazy ones?)

Bad service, expensive service. BA customers in NYC pay more than anyone in the United States for residential calls.

New Yorkers’s phone expenses are 50% percent above the US national average. For basic service and 100 local five-minute calls a month, BA charges $30 in New York. In Honolulu it’s $22.40, in Miami $16.86, and in Los Angeles $16.01. The US national average is $19.92. If BA charged the national average in New York City, the city would save over $60 million a year.

In one year, a New Yorker pays almost $170 more than Los Angeles residents for the same services.

In spite of all this abuse, BA has more than enough clients, since it controls local calls in 13 states, including the District of Columbia. Thanks to deregulation of telecoms in the US and the resulting mega-mergers, BA is now one of five companies that controls the country’s phone market.

These phone company mergers are undoing the 1984 breakup of the AT&T monopoly into smaller companies, known as ‘Baby Bells’. Bell Atlantic was precisely one of those ‘Baby Bells’.

NYNEX wasn’t any good either

According to the Daily News, the NYNEX company didn’t give maintenance to its infrastructure and even downsized its technical staff. The result was a customer service disaster. The problems in service were so severe that in 1995 New York state regulators made exception to the free market dogma and put NYNEX under a special regime, known as a Performance Regulatory Plan. After one year, the company didn’t live up to the expectations of this regime and had to pay $72.9 million in rebates to customers.

NYNEX is now part of Bell Atlantic. GTE is now also part of Bell Atlantic. The Puerto Rico Telephone Company is now part of GTE, therefore a part of Bell Atlantic. Welcome to the dazzling world of globalized telecommunications!

For more information on the battle over the privatization of the Puerto Rico Telephone Company:

Tuesday, May 21, 1997. Governor Rosselló puts PRTC up for sale: http://www.neravt.com/left/ruiz6.htm

Monday, August 18, 1997. Nationwide 24 hr. work stoppage against PRTC privatization called for: http://www.neravt.com/left/ruiz8.htm

Monday, September 29, 1997. ALL SET FOR THE OCTOBER 1 NATIONAL WORK STOPPAGE!: http://www.neravt.com/left/ruiz10.htm

Wednesday, October 8, 1997. OVER 100,000 MARCH AGAINST PRIVATIZATION ON OCT. 1ST!: http://www.neravt.com/left/ruiz11.htm

Friday, June 12, 1998. PHONE COMPANY WORKERS TO GO ON STRIKE AGAINST PRIVATIZATION: http://www.neravt.com/left/ruiz20.htm

Friday, July 9, 1998. 'PEOPLES' STRIKE AGAINST PRIVATISATION' DEEMED SUCCESSFUL: http://www.neravt.com/left/ruiz21.htm

Solidarity with PRTC workers: http://members.tripod.com/~Frente_Estudiantil/cintamar.htm

An excellent analysis of the 1998 PRTC strike by professor Rafael Bernabe: http://www.labournet.org.uk/1998/August/prstr.html

A first-rate page on global telecom workers’s issues. Good links to articles on PRTC strike: http://www.btinternet.com/~donald.macdonald/homepage.htm