Qwest, union face midnight deadline
By Jeff Smith, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published October 10, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
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Qwest and its largest union, the Communications Workers of America, resumed bargaining Thursday in efforts to reach a tentative agreement by a midnight deadline today.
A previous agreement hammered out in mid-August, a week before the Democratic National Convention, was rejected recently by a majority of Qwest's 20,000 union employees.
That agreement called for health care premium sharing for the first time and a 9.73 percent wage increase over three years.
Qwest is viewed as having leverage because of the recent financial turmoil, but the union has authorized a strike as a last resort if it can't get what it believes is a fair agreement.
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