FairPoint won’t back down in strike, CEO tells Pingree
Source: Portland Press Herald
BY WHIT RICHARDSON
In a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, the CEO of FairPoint Communications made clear that the company has no intention of backing down in its fight with the unions that represent the roughly 800 FairPoint employees in Maine who have been on strike for more than two months.
“It is the unions that chose to walk off the job in an effort to preserve contract provisions that are wholly inconsistent with today’s competitive telecommunications landscape,” FairPoint CEO Paul Sunu wrote to Pingree in a letter dated Dec. 23. “It is the unions that will determine when they return to work.”
Sunu, who has been CEO of the North Carolina-based telecommunications company since August 2010, is responding to a letter Pingree sent him on Dec. 19, in which she took the company to task for the prolonged strike and “what seems like an unwillingness to compromise.”
Pingree, a Democrat who represents Maine’s 1st Congressional District, also implied in her letter that the company’s contracts with the state government could be at stake. One such contract FairPoint has with Maine is a $32 million agreement to operate and maintain the state’s next-generation 911 emergency communication system.
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Read more: http://www.pressherald.com/2014/12/23/fairpoint-ceo-responds-to-pingree-over-striking-workers/
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