PORTLAND — FairPoint Communications and unions representing more than 1,700 striking workers are headed back to the bargaining table, federal mediators announced Friday.
Top leaders from both negotiating teams are to gather in Washington, D.C., at the request of Allison Beck, acting director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. The unions said the meeting is Sunday.
The last session convened by a federal mediator in Boston on Nov. 18 ended in an hour with no progress.
But officials say this time, things could be different. The federal mediation service plans to play a formal role in discussions, rather than simply bringing the two parties together.
FairPoint workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have been on strike since October.
“We appreciate the federal mediator’s work to bring the two sides together,” said Peter McLaughlin, chair of the unions’ bargaining committee and business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2327 in Maine.
FairPoint spokeswoman Angelynne Beaudry said the North Carolina-based telecommunications company “remains willing to listen to reasonable union proposals that ensure the company’s ability to compete.”
“We hope the unions are prepared to make such proposals,” she said in an email.
The company, which declared an impasse in negotiations in late August, imposed terms of its final offer, including freezing the old pension plan. The company also intends to require workers to contribute to health care costs for the first time. Other provisions allow the company to hire contractors and to eliminate retiree health care benefits for current workers.
The IBEW and Communications Workers of America say the company is asking for too much.
The National Labor Relations Board this week rejected the union’s accusation that the company failed to bargain in good faith and violated the law by imposing its “final offer.” The unions have appealed to the labor board’s Washington headquarters, but that process will take months.
FairPoint has struggled since purchasing Verizon’s phone and high-speed Internet services in northern New England in 2007.
It filed for bankruptcy 18 months later and has yet to reverse losses every year since the purchase.
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