A lower court judge was right in awarding damages to Time Warner Cable for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, Local Union No. 3's violation of a no-strike provision and in vacating the part of an arbitral award prohibiting future strikes, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a mandate (in Pacer) Tuesday. Judges Reena Raggi, Denny Chin and Susan Carney in their summary order said Local 3 waived its right to strike when it lodged no challenge to its 2013 collective bargaining agreement until months after an arbitrator issued an adverse interim award. It rejected union arguments the contract can't preclude an orderly protest to unfair labor practices since the Local 3 was "not in fact orderly" when it blocked vehicular access to a TWC facility. In denying TWC's cross-appeal, the judges said the U.S. District Court decision wasn't wrong regarding future strikes, since the questions presented to an arbitrator didn't address future strikes. Charter Communications owns TWC.

About 21,000 AT&T wireless workers in 36 states could strike Monday after sending their employer a 72-hour notice to end their contract extension, the Communications Workers of America said in a Friday news release. The workers authorized a strike in February, when their contract was to expire, but have been working under an extension (see 1702090054). The union sent the notice Friday as CWA workers from various AT&T contract negotiations protested outside the carrier’s shareholder meeting in Dallas. Inside, stockholders re-elected AT&T board members and voted against requiring reports on political spending and lobbying.

The Vermont Department of Public Service supported OK of Consolidated Communications' buy of FairPoint, but only if the Public Service Board conditions the deal on requiring Consolidated to invest in the Vermont network. “The merger should result in a healthier, better managed company, which should lead to greater investments in the Vermont network and improved service quality for Vermont businesses and residential consumers,” DPS Director-Telecommunications and Connectivity Clay Purvis said in testimony dated Wednesday (docket 8881). The department “is concerned that Consolidated does not have a full understanding of the condition of FairPoint’s network, especially with regard to the last mile,” he said. In other testimony, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers sought a condition requiring Consolidated to commit to network investment and defend any proposed job cuts as not hurting reliability or safety of telephone service. Separately, a financial analyst working for IBEW urged the Vermont PSB to “defer ruling on this transaction until Consolidated provides much more information about its plans for Vermont.” Similar conditions were proposed at the Maine Public Utilities Commission (see 1703160040). FairPoint expected but was disappointed by the IBEW testimony and looks forward to filing a rebuttal to refute the criticisms, a spokeswoman said. "We appreciate the Department’s recommendation the Board approve the proposal, and we look forward to completing the regulatory process."

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission voted 5-0 to OK Consolidated’s $1.5 billion buy of FairPoint without conditions. Consumer and labor advocates are seeking conditions -- and are expected to get some -- in Maine and possibly in FairPoint’s other two big New England markets earlier acquired from Verizon. There may be a strong case for broadband deployment conditions, especially in rural areas that haven’t seen much investment from FairPoint since the company’s rocky integration of Verizon wireline assets in 2008, said Technology Business Research analyst Chris Antlitz.

Two California mayors said they would support a union strike against AT&T if the contract dispute continues, as 79 elected officials wrote a letter supporting workers. About 17,000 California and Nevada union workers voted to authorize a strike in December, but union leaders have yet to declare one (see 1612160065). “If they did go on strike, then I would support the strike,” Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor (D) said Tuesday on a Communications Workers of America teleconference. Arvin Mayor Jose Gurrola said, “I would support them because they’re standing up for good-paying jobs and good benefits and providing reliable, quality service throughout the state.” Gillmor said Santa Clara residents complain about AT&T landline phone and internet services, and Gurrola said Arvin residents don’t have reliable mobile or high-speed services. “You would imagine that we wouldn't have any issues in our location" in Silicon Valley, Gillmor said. “But we still experience and I receive many complaints from our residents about the lack of quality and in some cases availability of service.” The mayors joined 77 other California and Nevada elected officials writing a letter to CEO Randall Stephenson about reliability problems and job cuts as the company negotiates with workers in the two states. Mayors, city council members and state legislators signed the letter. A spokesman responded that the telco employs more full-time, union employees than any other company in the U.S., hiring 2,700 union employees in California last year. That's across the business and a combination of new jobs and backfill for attrition, a spokesperson told us. It invested about $7.25 billion in California wireless and wireline networks over the past three years, he said. “Our objective is to reach a fair contract that will allow us to continue to provide solid union-represented careers with excellent wages and benefits, just as we have with 28 of our other bargaining units across the country, including [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] IBEW-represented landline employees in California who ratified a very similar agreement to the one we’re proposing with the CWA.”

Two California mayors said they would support a union strike against AT&T if the contract dispute continues, as 79 elected officials wrote a letter supporting workers. About 17,000 California and Nevada union workers voted to authorize a strike in December, but union leaders have yet to declare one (see 1612160065). “If they did go on strike, then I would support the strike,” Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor (D) said Tuesday on a Communications Workers of America teleconference. Arvin Mayor Jose Gurrola said, “I would support them because they’re standing up for good-paying jobs and good benefits and providing reliable, quality service throughout the state.” Gillmor said Santa Clara residents complain about AT&T landline phone and internet services, and Gurrola said Arvin residents don’t have reliable mobile or high-speed services. “You would imagine that we wouldn't have any issues in our location" in Silicon Valley, Gillmor said. “But we still experience and I receive many complaints from our residents about the lack of quality and in some cases availability of service.” The mayors joined 77 other California and Nevada elected officials writing a letter to CEO Randall Stephenson about reliability problems and job cuts as the company negotiates with workers in the two states. Mayors, city council members and state legislators signed the letter. A spokesman responded that the telco employs more full-time, union employees than any other company in the U.S., hiring 2,700 union employees in California last year. That's across the business and a combination of new jobs and backfill for attrition, a spokesperson told us. It invested about $7.25 billion in California wireless and wireline networks over the past three years, he said. “Our objective is to reach a fair contract that will allow us to continue to provide solid union-represented careers with excellent wages and benefits, just as we have with 28 of our other bargaining units across the country, including [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] IBEW-represented landline employees in California who ratified a very similar agreement to the one we’re proposing with the CWA.”

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, Local Union No. 3 violated its contract with its 2014 work stoppage and "has been attempting to avoid the consequences of its mischief" by focusing on a technicality, Time Warner Cable said in a brief (in Pacer) Monday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That technicality is the ostensible retroactive nullification by the National Labor Relations Board of Local 3's collective bargaining agreement with TWC to arbitrate disputes, the company said. The NLRB didn't invalidate the entire contract, but instead decided the parties failed to agree on a tangential issue, TWC said. Federal appellate precedent is that when a party repeatedly acknowledges its collective bargaining arbitration obligations and submits a dispute to arbitration without objection, that party is bound by the results of that arbitration, TWC said. Local 3 is appealing a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ruling upholding an arbitrator's award of damages to TWC, and the company is cross-appealing the portion of the Brooklyn court's judgment that denied confirmation of part of a 2015 final arbitration award ordering the union to refrain from further violations. TWC said Brooklyn court was entitled to adjudicate the case and it should have confirmed the NLRB arbitrator's award in full or at the least confirmed the monetary portion. A union brief (in Pacer) earlier this month said there was no valid collective bargaining agreement when the arbitrator used that agreement as the basis for ruling Local 3 had violated it.

Telecom and media industry money is flowing to incumbents in the competitive Senate Commerce Committee member re-election races, according to the latest Federal Election Commission records. Money favors the incumbents generally, whether the seats are safe or not, especially benefiting the coffers of Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D. Telecom-affiliated unions are backing Democratic challengers.

Telecom and media industry money is flowing to incumbents in the competitive Senate Commerce Committee member re-election races, according to the latest Federal Election Commission records. Money favors the incumbents generally, whether the seats are safe or not, especially benefiting the coffers of Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D. Telecom-affiliated unions are backing Democratic challengers.

AT&T and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers reached a pair of tentative agreements covering nearly 3,000 IBEW-represented workers in 14 states picked up when AT&T bought DirecTV in 2015, the telco said in a news release Tuesday. One agreement covers more than 1,600 workers in AT&T's field services group, and the other 1,300 call center workers in Boise, Idaho, and Missoula, Montana, the company said. The tentative contracts cover such issues as wages, healthcare, pensions and work rules and will go to the union's membership for a vote in coming days, it said.