The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Frontier to drop health care coverage for dozens of retirees
At least 100 Frontier Communications retirees who are members of Communications Workers of America Local 1298 will lose their companysponsored health care benefits next month under a new contract with the union.
Dave Weidlich, president of the the Hamdenbased union local, said the company is refusing to budge on its position that the retirees will lose their health care. And because retiree health care is not a mandatory bargaining item in Frontier’s contract with the union, Local 1298 officials have no recourse but to accept the company’s terms.
“Unless they make a 180degree turn, these retirees are getting kicked to the curb by the company,” Weidlich said. “And this is something that should not be happening.”
Those retirees losing health benefits will have them until late November, he said. With the union scheduled to ratify a new contract Nov. 22, the retirees would lose their health care coverage at that time.
Brigid Smith, a Frontier Communications spokeswoman, declined to explain the company’s decision, choosing instead to issue a terse, onesentence statement.
“Once the new contract takes effect, former retirees will have access to continued coverage under either
Medicare or COBRA,” the statement said.
Norwalkbased Frontier announced a tentative contract agreement with workers represented by Local 1298 on Monday. The new contract, if ratified next month, would run through October 2021.
In a statement issued Monday, company officials said tentative deal is “equitable and will better position Frontier to compete in a challenging and everchanging marketplace.”
Local 1298 represents 2,046 active Frontier employees and about 200 of the company’s retirees, Weidlich said.
The move only affects workers who retired from Frontier — it does not affect workers who retired when the Connecticut telecommunications provider was the Southern New England Telephone Co. or when it was AT&T Connecticut. AT&T announced in December 2013 that is was selling the company’s Connecticut landline service to Frontier for $2 billion.
Frontier’s move to shed retiree health care coverage is part of a growing trend in corporate America.
A 2017 Kaiser Family Foundation report found that only 25 percent of large firms that offer health benefits offer retiree coverage. That’s down from 32 percent in 2007 and 40 percent in 1999.
Frontier took over AT&T’s Connecticut landline network in October 2014.
That set in motion weeks of consumers complaints as thousands of customers lost landline, Uverse and broadband Internet service for days at a time. There were also delays in reaching customer service contacts to schedule repair appointments, and technicians missing appointments to restore service.
Weidlich said Frontier executives are breaking one of the promises they made to state utility regulators in order to acquire AT&T’s landline service in Connecticut.
“They have screwed this company up financially to the point where I’m concerned that our members who are still working for the company really have no future,” he said.
Frontier is scheduled to announce its thirdquarter financial result on Nov. 5. When the company reported its secondquarter and firsthalf results in early August, it had lost $5.32 billion, compared to losses of $18 million during the same period in 2018.
The company experienced customer losses in all of it primary areas of business during the second quarter of this year. Frontier lost 71,000 broadband customers during that threemonth period, 46,000 cable television customers and 8,000 subscribers from its DISH TV offering.