PORTLAND — After ratification voting on a new contract began Friday, union members employed by FairPoint Communications dispersed from the Fireside Inn banquet room to celebrations elsewhere.
“There are a lot of celebrations taking place,” said Jen Nappi, assistant business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2327. “It’s been a long, hard fight, and we’re ready to go back to work and move past this.”
Voting by union members through the weekend will determine whether the strike will end at the 131-day mark and send about 1,700 people back to work on Wednesday. Nappi and IBEW negotiator Peter McLaughlin said they were confident the contract would be ratified.
“I suspect it will (pass),” McLaughlin said.
The unions and company agreed not to disclose details of the new contract before voting concludes Sunday, but McLaughlin said it addresses major concerns the IBEW and Communications Workers of America had over health care, retirement benefits and outsourcing work.
While McLaughlin declined to speak about the specifics of the contract, he said he thinks the resolution will make the publicly traded company more attractive to potential buyers.
“Do I believe that the company is ripe for acquisition? I do,” McLaughlin said. “And I think this agreement makes it even more appealing.”
Nappi said she hopes the company is sold soon.
“I pray to God someone comes in and buys us that actually wants to be a telephone company,” Nappi said.
Barry Sine, a telecommunications industry analyst with the Wall Street brokerage Drexel Hamilton, said in a telephone interview Tuesday — before news of the contract deal — that Frontier Communications’ announcement Feb. 5 that it plans to purchase Verizon’s landline business in California, Florida and Texas shows there’s still an appetite for investment in the landline phone business.
“That cuts both ways,” Sine said, noting that Frontier recently bought AT&T’s landline business in Connecticut and will spend the near future adjusting to a near doubling of its network through the $10.5 billion acquisition of the landline network in California, Florida and Texas.
“The timing (for a possible acquisition of FairPoint) has moved out by a year or two, but the chance has increased,” Sine said.
Policymakers and industry watchers have for a while speculated about FairPoint’s sale, with resolution of the latest contract negotiations representing a key hurdle to clear before the company — owned largely by hedge fund investors since its bankruptcy reorganization in 2011 — gets shopped around to potential buyers.
The company struggled after buying Verizon’s New England landline business, declaring bankruptcy in 2009. The contract agreement reached after the nearly five-month strike was the first negotiated between the unions and the current ownership, as the contract that expired in August was a holdover from the Verizon days.
The unions also declined to state how many years the proposed contract covers.
For landline customers who saw a sharp drop in service quality and Internet customers who sent an increasing number of complaints to state regulators during the strike, McLaughlin said he expects the union employees will set to work reducing backlogs on Wednesday.
The company hired replacement workers during the strike to maintain the company’s regulated landline telephone business and its unregulated broadband business. Nappi said that some of the replacement workers would likely stay on through the transition Wednesday, but next week will be the last at FairPoint for the bulk of those workers.
McLaughlin said most of the employees in both unions stayed on through the course of the strike, but some did move away and find other jobs or temporary work. He was not sure Friday how many union members would not be returning to work at FairPoint if the unions approve the contract.
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