Pacific Bell

Pacific Bell said Thursday that it will eventually close its bill-processing center in Anaheim as part of a consolidation that will eliminate 80 jobs in the area. The Anaheim and Sacramento operations will be consolidated into a single center in West Sacramento, and the company expects to offer regular employees in Anaheim the option of transferring, said Dan Hammalian, Pac Bell's director of bill processing. The existing Sacramento center employs 122 people.

A social services agency that runs a shelter for battered women has sued Pacific Bell, alleging that the company printed the shelter's confidential address in its July 1999 White Pages telephone book. Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles was forced to immediately close the shelter and move its residents, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The agreement is aimed at creating jobs and giving a greater voice to members of the Latino community, company President Ted Saenger said. "Technology is making telecommunications issues increasingly important to Hispanics and all Californians," Saenger said after signing a "statement of mutual cooperation" with former New Mexico Gov. Jerry Apodaca, president of the national Hispanic Assn. on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition group representing six national Latino organizations.

It's there, and Dick Africano knows it's there. So do 590 other Pacific Bell employees who work in the featureless industrial building. But few of Pacific Bell's 4.5 million customers in Southern California know it's there. And Africano, area manager of Pacific Bell's Cost Recording Information Systems, wants to keep it that way.

The Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a $250-million, five-year contract with Pacific Bell for the telecommunications giant to provide local service to county phones and link county computers into a centralized network. County officials told supervisors they had significantly toughened the county's contract with PacBell since October, when a Times report revealed that the state blamed PacBell for a spree of devastating computer crashes.

In an effort to cut costs, San Francisco-based Pacific Bell plans to close its 25 remaining bill-payment offices statewide, including two in Los Angeles and one in Torrance, by the end of the year. PacBell has asked state regulators for permission to close eight offices by the end of May and the remaining offices over several months. The move is opposed by consumer groups and the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, a division of the state Public Utilities Commission.

Pacific Bell, which had sought $492 million in interim rate increases, was instead ordered by the California Public Utilities Commission Wednesday to lower its rates by $18.5 million. The action left the company, which provides local telephone service to 7.2 million residential customers and 1 million businesses in California, "totally dismayed," spokesman Reed Waters said. The PUC agreed, however, to raise the rates charged by Santa Monica-based General Telephone Co.

The phones ring 14,000 times a day in a nondescript office building in downtown Santa Ana. And every caller is someone speaking Spanish, in need of a translator. This is Pacific Bell's Language Assistance Bureau, a hubbub of computerized switchboards and 90 bilingual operators who field calls en espanol from all over the state. If a woman in San Jose calls 611 for repairs but can't communicate, she is patched through to Santa Ana within seconds.

An Orange County Superior Court jury has awarded $2.5 million in damages to a telephone installer who sued Pacific Bell, alleging she was sexually harassed for years at the utility's Tustin service garage. The worker, Charlotte Ernsting, contended in her lawsuit that PacBell co-workers at the Myford garage repeatedly made sexually derogatory remarks, grabbed her buttocks and endangered her life by dispatching her to high-crime areas after dark.