PHILADELPHIA -- Bell Atlantic Corp. yesterday sent home without pay 1,000 to 1,200 employees who showed up for work wearing T-shirts depicting themselves as "road kill" on the information superhighway.
The T-shirt shows a furry animal squashed on a road, depicted as the "info superhighway." The animal is labeled "Bell Atlantic employees." Bell Atlantic is shown as a truck.
The incident symbolizes the conflict between telecommunications companies scrambling to grab a piece of the multimedia business of the future and unionized workers concerned about the impact on jobs and wages.
The Philadelphia company announced in August that it would eliminate 5,600 jobs, or 7.7 percent of its work force, to cut costs so that it could expand from its traditional telephone business to a vast video network.
The Communications Workers union on Nov. 7 filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the threatened disciplinary action against workers who showed up wearing the T-shirts violated national labor law and infringed on freedom of expression.
Employees who arrived at work Wednesday wearing the red and white T-shirts were given the option by Bell bosses of taking them off or turning them inside out. When they refused, they were sent home and suspended for the holiday.