The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
As Frontier offers buyouts, union plans grievances
The labor union representing Frontier Communications technicians plans to file grievances next week with an arbitrator and Connecticut regulators, claiming the company is violating its contract by relying on outside contractors to roll out its gigabit internet service.
On Thursday, Frontier offered buyouts to nearly 80 Connecticut workers covered under a labor contract negotiated by the Hamden-based Local 1298 of the Communications Workers of America labor union, according to David Weidlich Jr., president of Local 1298.
“It’s a violation of our contract — it’s definitely a case for arbitration,” Weidlich said Friday. “Using contractors while you’re offering voluntary buyouts ... is very taboo in our world.”
A Frontier spokesperson acknowledged the company uses external contractors, but said the practice does not violate any labor agreement.
“The use of contractors to perform network build project work is a longstanding practice in Connecticut and the industry,” Frontier spokesperson Erin Kurtz said in an email.
“It is also permitted under the terms of our collective bargaining agreement with CWA in [Connecticut], which recognizes the longstanding use of contractors in our business.”
However, as part of an ongoing Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority inquiry last year into how Frontier, Eversource and Avangrid manage the utility poles they own, CWA Local 1298 cited a Frontier letter from a prior bargaining negotiation that suggests the company agreed to avoid using contract labor when jobs can be performed by union workers.
“It continues to be our general policy that traditional telephone work consistently be performed by bargaining unit employees who will not be contracted out if it will currently and directly cause layoffs or part-timing of employees,” according to a passage of the Frontier letter cited by CWA.
“The company will make every effort, consistent with the needs of the business, to use bargaining unit employees, rather than outside contractors, to perform bargaining unit telecommunications work expected to be extended duration, including telecommunications work requiring application of new technologies,” the letter stated.
In the filing, Weidlich told PURA the collective bargaining agreement “is intended and written to protect union jobs and to protect union labor from losing work to contractors.”
However, Kurtz described the passage as “an isolated quote” in a longer and more detailed letter.
After clearing a bankruptcy restructuring in April 2021, Frontier recorded earnings of $414 million over the final eight months of the year for its first annual profit since 2014. The company releases its results in early May for the first three months of this year.
Frontier spent $2 billion in 2014 to acquire AT&T’s historic Southern New England Telephone operation based in New Haven, covering the vast majority of Connecticut except for portions of Greenwich where Verizon Communications offers service.
At the time, Frontier committed to maintaining a Connecticut workforce of just over 2,400 people for the duration of an initial labor contract. That deal and subsequent pacts spared Frontier from having to hire new workers to replace those who retire, leave on their own accord or otherwise are fired for just cause.
Two years ago, roughly 400 Frontier workers took buyouts, reducing the company’s workforce now to about 1,600 people, Weidlich said.
Frontier is now rolling out fiber optic service in a race with Altice USA in southwest Connecticut to offer customers gigabit-plus internet service to handle video streaming and increasing numbers of household devices connected to the web.
In Norwalk, where it lists its corporate headquarters address, Frontier is offering its gigabit service for $60 a month over three years, or $150 monthly for its twogigabit service. As of last summer, Frontier disclosed it was offering its FiberOptic Internet service in nearly 50 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities, including Bridgeport, Stamford, New Haven, Hartford, Danbury and Middletown.
CWA 1298 maintains Frontier wants to hire external contractors from other states to perform that rollout, claiming the company would save money against what it has to pay in Connecticut under wage scales for unionized worker pay and benefits.
Under the latest wage scale to take effect last October, Frontier’s unionized workers received base pays ranging from $679 a week for entry-level workers, to nearly $4,150 for seniormost workers with specialty skills.
“CWA wants to help the company grow the business in Connecticut,” Weidlich said. “Why are they replacing us with contract labor?”