PORTLAND, Maine: Leaders of two unions representing more than 1,700 FairPoint Communications workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont say they’re going after the CEO, board members and corporate owners for refusing to negotiate.
The Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers vowed to take their demonstrations “to a new level” by targeting the CEO, board members and corporate owners where they live and work. As part of that effort, the unions picketed this week outside a New York event where FairPoint CEO Paul Sunu was speaking.
“We think they’re trying to provoke a strike,” Don Trementozzi, president of CWA Local 1400 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said said.
Charlotte, North Carolina-based FairPoint Communications Inc., which offers Internet, phone and other services, ended labor negotiations by declaring an impasse last month.
Since then, the company has been implementing a new contract with provisions that’ve angered union workers, like Friday’s elimination of contributions to a fund that assists workers with day care costs.
A FairPoint spokeswoman said the company has never refused to meet with the union, and she accused the unions of using “inflammatory rhetoric” and “scare tactics.”
“We’ve been at the bargaining table since April. When the unions say they want FairPoint to come back, what they really mean is that they want FairPoint to abandon its final positions on issues that are critical to the future of the company. This we won’t do,” spokeswoman Angelynne Amores Beaudry said.
AP
