THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609280221
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 88 lines
Bell Atlantic Corp. Chairman Raymond W. Smith on Friday told a group of African-American employees that he takes a recent lawsuit charging the phone company with racial discrimination ``very seriously.'' He pledged to personally investigate the complaint, telling the applauding workers that ``work force diversity . . . is not an option.''
Smith spoke at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel to members of the Consortium of Information and Telecommunications Executives, which represents black employees of the regional phone company. About 1,300 employees were scheduled to attend the conference, which continues through Sunday.
The conference largely focuses on new technologies and the impact of telecommunications competition. Smith insisted that his company and its workers will prosper in the rapidly changing environment. He said Bell Atlantic's planned merger with Nynex Corp., which will create the nation's second-largest phone company behind AT&T Corp., will lift all employees' tides by creating new job opportunities.
But beneath the surface was an undertone of concern that Bell Atlantic's efforts to hire and promote minorities may be faltering. The suit filed last week in federal court in Washington by 48 past and present African-American employees was on many of the consortium delegates' minds.
Smith met the issue head-on in his half-hour speech and during a session with reporters.
He said he has been active in civil rights for over 30 years and is pleased generally with Bell Atlantic's record of hiring and advancing minorities. But he said he and other phone-company leaders aren't yet dismissing the suit's merits.
``We'll look into it and see if there's a problem,'' Smith said. ``We clearly have to be a company that is not just even-handed, but affirmative, in the way that we deal with all aspects of the community.''
The African-American employees' consortium is not involved in the lawsuit. Loretta Hulin, the group's vice president who chairs the Norfolk meeting, said she hears complaints from some black workers, but Bell Atlantic is generally a good place to work.
``Because of the inroads we've helped make,'' she said of her group, ``we have blacks at every level of the business except the top chair.''
Among others at the meeting there were widely varying views. In minority hiring and promotion, ``we are by far not the best and by far not the worst,'' said Tom Wyche, a systems engineer in Washington with 19 years' experience. A 33-year employee, an engineer from New Jersey, said ``there's room for improvement.''
More than anything, the conference's delegates seemed interested in gauging how the fast-changing telecommunications landscape was going to affect their jobs. Some weren't sure the all-out slugfest that companies like Bell Atlantic are gearing up for will mean job opportunity or loss.
Smith brimmed with confidence.
In an interview, he predicted that Bell Atlantic will drub cable-TV competitors like Cox Communications Inc. when it enters the video-services business next year. He said he expects Bell Atlantic to sign up at least 30 percent of its current customers for long-distance services within five years of being allowed into that market. And he said Bell Atlantic is poised to be the dominant provider of access to the global Internet computer network within its traditional territory.
Smith conceded that Bell Atlantic's work in carving out new markets was made tougher by recent customer-service problems. In Virginia and a few other states, the company has failed in the last year to consistently meet regulatory requirements for quickly answering customers' calls or restoring lost service. Part of the problem, Smith said, was Bell Atlantic's unexpected success in selling additional features like second phone lines.
Smith defended his company's decision earlier this month to appeal the Federal Communications Commission's rules ushering in competition in local-exchange phone service. Those rules were made to carry out the bill signed into law by President Clinton last February setting the framework for unparalleled telecommunications competition.
Bell Atlantic is not trying to preserve its monopoly on local services, Smith said. It just wants to make sure that the competition is fair and that companies like AT&T, which plans to use Bell Atlantic's network to re-sell local services, pay a fair rate for that right.
Under the current guidelines the FCC has set for these so-called ``resale'' discounts, Bell Atlantic will have to cut AT&T a price break of anywhere from 17 to 25 percent - unless state regulators can prove more or less is deserved.
At the discounts proscribed, ``AT&T will not put a nickel, and neither will MCI or anyone else, into its own plant,'' Smith said. ``They're just going to rent our facilities. That's not real competition.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Motoya Nakamura/The Virginian-Pilot
[Bell Atlantic Chairman Raymond W. Smith...]
KEYWORDS: BELL ATLANTIC DIVERSITY LAWSUIT DISCRIMINATION
by CNB