[T]wo members of Vermont’s congressional delegation are calling on the buyer of FairPoint Communications to reverse layoffs the company announced in November.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat, signed joint letters to the chief executive officers of FairPoint and Consolidated Communications Holdings Inc., which announced Dec. 5 it would buy the company.
In the letters, the lawmakers called FairPoint’s customer service and labor relations “dismal” since 2007, when it purchased landlines from Verizon and started doing business in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
They also called the company’s relationship with its workers, most of whom are part of labor unions, “unnecessarily antagonistic” and cited the company’s proposal to impose “drastic cuts to pay and benefits” on union workers that led to the 2014-2015 labor strike.
“It is particularly callous to destroy the livelihoods of loyal FairPoint workers just as the cold weather approaches and as families prepare to celebrate the holiday season,” Sanders and Welch wrote. “These workers helped build the company’s value, yet they are being discarded as collateral damage of a sale designed to maximize profits for a tiny group of Wall Street hedge fund investors.”
FairPoint and Consolidated Communications are both publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange. FairPoint first considered selling after it posted a $45.2 million operating loss in the quarter after it negotiated a lower-cost labor contract to end the 2014-2015 strike.
But, Sanders and Welch said, “Just three months after the strike ended, FairPoint closed its South Burlington call center and laid-off more than 70 unionized workers. Most recently, FairPoint announced last month that it was laying off nearly 10 percent of its remaining workforce, presumably to make the company more attractive for the sale to Consolidated.”
They added: “We urge you to reverse FairPoint’s decision and send the clear message that Consolidated values its workers and the communities in which the company operates. We know the (Communications Workers of America) and (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) welcome the opportunity to work with Consolidated to help make its New England operations successful again.”
The latest layoffs of approximately 110 workers across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, were expected to affect 20 Vermont workers. Union representatives say the formal pink slips will come on Friday, and they’re trying to keep as many people employed as possible.
Mike Spillane, the business manager for the local branch of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said FairPoint is “really doing this with blinders on” because they’re selling. He said the company expects to complete the sale within six months.
Spillane said he is now expecting job losses for 26 people—13 who work indoors, such as at desks, and 13 who work outdoors, such as service technicians. He said there are no open jobs at the company for people who work indoors, and people who work outdoors would need to uproot their lives to take jobs available in another part of the state.
“It’s a brain drain again in Vermont,” Spillane said. “We keep losing jobs here and they give that work to people in Maine and new Hampshire. It reduces the salaries that are paid in Vermont, the tax base that we as a state need.”
He said that while people are being laid off in other states, “all of my (indoor) work that we have in the state of Vermont seems to be migrating to Portland, and that’s something that we’re crying foul about.”
Angelynne Amores Beaudry, the spokesperson for FairPoint, said in a statement that “any prudent business” would reduce its workforce when workload and revenue decline, which she called one of the “realities of rapidly evolving technology, changing consumer preferences and an ever-more-competitive telecommunications landscape.”
Beaudry also said that Sanders and Welch did not “acknowledge the more than $900 million FairPoint has invested in the region, including more than $100 million in the Vermont broadband infrastructure, since 2008.”
“That investment has allowed FairPoint to increase the broadband coverage in its Vermont footprint from approximately 65% to over 90% during that time, enabling the residents of the state to participate in the information age economy,” she said.
