Oct. 3, 2002 – Striking telephone and cable television workers took up their placards on picket lines Thursday morning on Day 2 of a job action against Innovative Telephone and the territory's two cable companies, all of which are owned by Innovative Communication Corp.
Representatives of the United Steelworkers Union, which rejected the companies' final contract offer on Tuesday, said they are now being called back to the bargaining table. Randolph Allen, the union's international representative in the negotiations, said the union is willing to resume talks but not to rehash the same issues.
Innovative officials "said they're willing to meet, but the offer they left on the bargaining table has not changed," Allen said Thursday morning.
The request to resume talks came by way of a letter written by Jeffrey Fraser, a mainland lawyer who is Innovative's chief negotiator.
Meanwhile installers, service technicians, business agents and custodial workers resumed picketing in front of Innovative offices and service depots on St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John. There have been media reports of as many as 40 pickets at a given site, but Allen said the workers have organized themselves into shifts so that no one group of workers has to walk for lengthy periods of time.
He said rank and file participation has been almost 100 percent, meaning approximately 310 employees, according to Innovative. He also said there have been one or two unconfirmed reports of workers crossing picket lines.
Innovative Telephone's president, Samuel Ebbesen, call WVWI Radio on Wednesday morning appealing to workers to come back to work. Allen said labor leaders are willing to send them back, but only if both sides are willing to resume negotiations.
It's been some 25 years since telephone workers last staged a strike, when Innovative Telephone was the V.I. Telephone Corp., or Vitelco.
Allen said sending the workers out on strike was a serious move but one that had to be taken in order to emphasize the union's position on crucial aspects of the contract that expired on Monday, especially the issue of pensions.
"Since the merger of the companies last year, we told them the pensions were going to be an issue," he said.
ICC holdings in addition to Innovative Telephone and Innovative/Cable TV for both St. Thomas-St. John and St. Croix include Innovative Wireless/Vitel Cellular, Innovative Business Systems/Vitelcom, VI PowerNet, Innovative/Long Distance and The Virgin Islands Daily News.
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