Negotiators for the Communications Workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers reached agreement with AT&T on a new 18-month contract covering the company's 28,000 union workers.

Key financial features are 2 percent wage increases--on May 12, November 10, and May 11, 2003--an 8 percent increase in pension benefits, and a $250 signing bonus.

The unions also defeated the company's proposed 50 percent cut in disability benefits, its cuts in injured workers' benefits, and its givebacks in health care costs.

'After 24 hours of straight bargaining, a settlement was reached' that 'includes NONE (the unions' emphasis) of the retrogressive proposals the company has been putting across the table in the last few weeks,' CWA and IBEW said.

The contract, reached April 13, also includes language that CWA says should ease job security concerns. Those were a top cause for workers going into bargaining.

Amid mounting financial losses, AT&T shed thousands of union workers and outsourced the jobs of thousands of others in the last year. Meanwhile its CEO, Robert L. Armstrong, who earned $9.6 million last year, ensured his own job security through 2005, CWA President Morton Bahr said.

The unions said the new contract 'extends the process that aids us in returning bargaining unit work that has been moved to management.

'A committee to review and offer alternatives to all contracting initiatives has been set up, as well as one targeted at finding new work for our operators' the two unions added.

And a joint union-management council will 'review company plans and union needs for employment security and access to work.' AT&T's demand to use workers' pensions for buyouts and termination benefits was dumped.

The new agreement, if ratified, replaces one due to expire May 11.

This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.