COMMUNICATIONS Employees of Verizon work during pact talks

Health care and job security are the main sticking points.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid substantial progress at the negotiating table, some 78,000 workers at Verizon are working without a contract as two labor unions bargain over job security for the rank-and-file at the largest provider of local and wireless phone service in the U.S.
Telephone operators and technicians from Virginia to Maine are reporting to work, despite the expiration of a three-year contract over the weekend.
A federal mediator was overseeing talks on issues such as future layoffs and the prospects for those workers getting jobs in other parts of the company.
Growth areas
Verizon's local phone service business is shrinking, while growth areas are in wireless and high-speed Internet, separate divisions of the company that are not highly unionized.
"We are making significant progress ... although a few outstanding issues remain to be resolved," the Communications Workers of America said late Sunday.
Talks were to resume at 10 a.m. today.
The CWA represents the bulk of the 78,000 workers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, about 18,000.
The other key issue at the talks is health care. Verizon, like other companies facing soaring health costs, wants employees to assume more of the burden.
Arbitrator's order
Just three weeks ago an arbitrator ordered the company to rehire 2,300 people in New York state who had been laid off in December, ratcheting up tension at the labor negotiations and undermining the company's cost-cutting efforts.
The CWA's vice president called the arbitrator's decision "the greatest victory in my lifetime" for phone company employees.
Verizon cut 18,000 jobs in 2002 -- mainly through attrition and voluntary buyouts.
If the unions were to strike, some local telephone service for Verizon customers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic region could be affected.
The company says about 30,000 managers and outside contract workers prepared to take over.