Officials from Qwest Communications said they have reached a deal with two workers unions that had threatened to strike if the company did not meet its health care and wage requests.
The deal was announced early Monday morning and did not include further details. The two unions, the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, represent more than 20,200 employees.
"I appreciate the collaborative effort the bargaining teams made in confronting key issues facing employees and Qwest, especially health care,” said Teresa Taylor, executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Qwest. “I’m confident Qwest will be a stronger company because of tonight’s result.”
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Qwest, CWA avoid strike, will keep working on contract
The Communications Workers of America, the nation's largest telecommunications union, will not strike although its contract with Qwest Communications ended at midnight Sunday.
Both sides are still at an impasse concerning wages and health care coverage for Qwest workers. Neither side has budged, but both were willing to put the differences aside for now. The CWA workers will continue to work despite not having a contract and Qwest will continue to pay employee and family health benefits and normal wages.
A strike would have severely hampered Qwest, which is handling all telecommunications wiring for the Democratic National Convention, which is being hosted in Denver. Qwest is headquartered in Denver.
In a statement, CWA District 7 Vice President Louise Caddell said the union was frustrated with Qwest's bargaining team since the very beginning of the negotiations. Qwest rejected a CWA proposal Saturday night without reason, Caddell said.
"Our goal remains gaining a fair contract and we are prepared to continue to bargain in good faith to reach the agreement our members deserve," Caddell said.
Although the CWA has approved a strike for the 20,000-Qwest members, the union has not called for one. Qwest representative Robert Toevs, Qwest spokesperson, pointed the finger at the CWA for dragging its feet.
"We're disappointed that union leadership forced us to this point," Toevs wrote in a prepared statement. "By failing to negotiate a new contract, CWA leadership has denied its membership key union protections and benefits, including arbitration, its ability to automatically collect dues and bring new hires in as dues/fees-paying members of the union."
Both sides are still at an impasse concerning wages and health care coverage for Qwest workers. Neither side has budged, but both were willing to put the differences aside for now. The CWA workers will continue to work despite not having a contract and Qwest will continue to pay employee and family health benefits and normal wages.
A strike would have severely hampered Qwest, which is handling all telecommunications wiring for the Democratic National Convention, which is being hosted in Denver. Qwest is headquartered in Denver.
In a statement, CWA District 7 Vice President Louise Caddell said the union was frustrated with Qwest's bargaining team since the very beginning of the negotiations. Qwest rejected a CWA proposal Saturday night without reason, Caddell said.
"Our goal remains gaining a fair contract and we are prepared to continue to bargain in good faith to reach the agreement our members deserve," Caddell said.
Although the CWA has approved a strike for the 20,000-Qwest members, the union has not called for one. Qwest representative Robert Toevs, Qwest spokesperson, pointed the finger at the CWA for dragging its feet.
"We're disappointed that union leadership forced us to this point," Toevs wrote in a prepared statement. "By failing to negotiate a new contract, CWA leadership has denied its membership key union protections and benefits, including arbitration, its ability to automatically collect dues and bring new hires in as dues/fees-paying members of the union."
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
UA receives $1.4M NIH gene research grant
The University of Arizona has been awarded a $1.4 million grant for five years by the National Institutes of Health. The grant, announced by the UA on Aug. 11, will fund researchers looking to learn how human genes and the environment relate to human health.
Among the anticipated findings could be enhanced treatment and prevention of illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and asthma. Seventeen UA faculty members from six colleges will combine to train students by 2009.
The funding, called the Human Genes and the Environment Research (HuGER) grant through the NIH focuses on environmental and public health sciences and engineering, population and functional genomics and genetics, and computational biology, statistics and bioinformatics. Four graduate and three post-doctoral students will be recruited to the UA for the initial stages of the project.
UA's BIO5 will administer the HuGER grant to the UA colleges of Pharmacy, Agriculture and Life Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, Sciences, and Public Health. Because of the UA's long history of inter-department collaboration and BIO5's role in facilitating these partnerships, the university was a great target for the HuGER grant, said Terrence Monks, co-principal investigator and head of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the College of Pharmacy, in a prepared statement.
"We're really well placed because of the strengths that already exist on campus," he said.
Students will decide the specific health issues to research, although cancer, diabetes and asthma, given their connections with environmental triggers, are natural targets, Monk wrote. But the collaborative effort will not only expose student researchers to new ideas, it will also provide a platform to interact as a multifunctional team.
"We'll be training students to frame the correct questions by giving them a background in all the right disciplines and then training them to weave those disciplines together so they can apply the strengths of each to large population-based and patient-based studies," Monk wrote.
Among the anticipated findings could be enhanced treatment and prevention of illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and asthma. Seventeen UA faculty members from six colleges will combine to train students by 2009.
The funding, called the Human Genes and the Environment Research (HuGER) grant through the NIH focuses on environmental and public health sciences and engineering, population and functional genomics and genetics, and computational biology, statistics and bioinformatics. Four graduate and three post-doctoral students will be recruited to the UA for the initial stages of the project.
UA's BIO5 will administer the HuGER grant to the UA colleges of Pharmacy, Agriculture and Life Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, Sciences, and Public Health. Because of the UA's long history of inter-department collaboration and BIO5's role in facilitating these partnerships, the university was a great target for the HuGER grant, said Terrence Monks, co-principal investigator and head of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the College of Pharmacy, in a prepared statement."We're really well placed because of the strengths that already exist on campus," he said.
Students will decide the specific health issues to research, although cancer, diabetes and asthma, given their connections with environmental triggers, are natural targets, Monk wrote. But the collaborative effort will not only expose student researchers to new ideas, it will also provide a platform to interact as a multifunctional team.
"We'll be training students to frame the correct questions by giving them a background in all the right disciplines and then training them to weave those disciplines together so they can apply the strengths of each to large population-based and patient-based studies," Monk wrote.
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