760 area members of the Communications Workers of America entered the final day of a 4-day strike against telephone company SBC. Local workers are on strike as part of a 13 state strike involving over 100,000 workers. The strike is the result of a number of issues, among them SBC's failed promises to protect jobs during a series of mergers in the late 1990s (over the past two years SBC has contracted out 20,000 jobs in high-tech "growth industries") and costs for health coverage. While SBC CEO Ed Whitacre's pay went up by 93% in 2003, the company is claiming that it no longer can afford to maintain its old health plan. SBC wants to double the co-pays paid by employees to the level of 12 percent of total medical expenses. Under SBC's proposal, SBC would continue to pay insurance premiums while out-of-pocket expenses for employees would increase, especially for prescription drugs.
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