Chicago Local 21 Challenges SBC
in State Legislature
June 12, 2005
The IBEW and other groups concerned about the cost and quality of telecommunication services have derailed a bill in the Illinois legislature that was backed by SBC and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
The telecom bill would have abolished penalties on the company when service didn't meet defined standards and terminated state rules regulating SBC's fees for customers and firms.
Ron Kastner, president and business manager of Downers Grove, Illinois Local 21, says that the bill would have totally deregulated all new technologies, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). He credits the bill's defeat to "lobbying power." It is extremely important to get politically involved these days, says Kastner, because the "telecommunications industry is in such disarray."
Rosetta Shinn, a Local 21 lobbyist, says that steep manpower cutbacks at SBC in the late 1990's had resulted in major interruptions of service, leading the legislature to enact penalties. Removing the penalties, she contends, would send the wrong message to SBC and put consumer service and IBEW jobs in jeopardy.
Groups opposed to the telecom bill, include sheriff and police organizations, concerned that SBC is offering VoIP, but is failing to tell customers that the move could limit their access to 911 emergency service. The Citizens Utility Board and Citizen Action joined in opposition to the legislation, and in support of an alternate bill.
Kastner claims that major corporations are trying to avoid regulation by providing telephony through VoIP. "While we don't feel the need to over-regulate the industry," he says, lack of quality standards on telephony jeopardizes current union jobs as well as growth in the sector. Most lawmakers, he contends, are concerned about the technological ability to provide 911 service over VoIP, but they should consider the fact that without service standards, the phones won't work with the same regularity of wireline telephony. These concerns make this "not only a jobs issue, but a consumer issue as well," he says.
The SBC-backed bill passed the Senate, but was voted down in the House when Speaker Madigan supported the alternative bill. Shinn says that there was no time at the end of the legislative session to pass the revised bill, so that the current regulations are extended for two years. "This was a victory," says Kastner, but "not everything we wanted."
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