News and Events


09/02/10


08/02/10

Business Manager's Report
August 2, 2010


It has been 30 Days since Frontier took control of Verizon North of Michigan. The new owners are making changes to the management structure and how the new Company will be run. It will take time for them to make all the changes. Currently they are posting jobs to fully staff bargaining unit positions that are badly needed. Part of the sales agreement was that Verizon would have a fully staffed work force for Frontier to take over. Instead Verizon staffed those positions with contractors. The local is currently working with Frontier to replace all the contractors with local 1106 members.

The old way of forcing employees to produce numbers instead of quality and satisfied customers is going by the way side. Verizon has had ten years of ownership and has taken all the profits straight out of Michigan and spent it elsewhere. With little or no investment put back into Michigan, and a skeleton staff run by threats and intimidation, we are left with a network that is in dire need of updating and maintenance.

Prior to the completion of the sale, the IBEW locals with members and their contracts being transferred to Frontier, worked out an agreement. The agreement will allow three contracts to be bargained for the current 14 in the states that were sold to Frontier.

IBEW Local 1106 will bargain with Ohio 986, North Carolina 289, South Carolina 1431 and the National Buried Service Wire Agreement. This agreement will merge all the above named Locals into one contract. The second agreement will be IBEW 723 Indiana and its 5 contracts with Local 51, 21,702 out of Illinois. The Third agreement will merge contracts between Local 89 in Washington and Oregon and Local 543 in California, Arizona, and Nevada.

A copy of the MOA and the bylaws is posted below. At the last Local 1106 Unit meetings in July the members voted in favor of the System council 7 bylaws. The new council is only for IBEW locals that transferred to Frontier and will have oversight on all three contracts listed above. President Hill has appointed Ray Egelhoff Business Manager of Local 89 as Chairperson, Michael J. Brousseau Business Manager IBEW Local 1106 as Vice Chair and Fred Sabol as Secretary/Recorder of System Council 7. The first Meeting will take place in October at the telecommunication Conference in Florida.