State Of the Unions: Miho Walsh and Roy Prieb — State of the Unions

“I was impressed with Miho, because rather than poo-pooing the whole gaming experience when we were first dating, she dove in,” said Mr. Prieb, now 40, a founder of and partner in Saaspire, a technology consultancy in New York. “She dove in, not by creating her own character; she dove in by sitting next to me and playing with me. We both got into it, co-piloting one character around that world.”

Then they stopped, cold turkey.

“It was a bright spring day and we looked out the window and said, ‘Let’s quit,’ ” Mr. Prieb recalled.

But after hearing that the couple would be featured in a Vows article in The New York Times, the manufacturer of World of Warcraft sent them a free limited-time subscription.

“I brought back the character” — a brawny, helmeted warrior named Kwai — “and I resumed playing a little,” Mr. Prieb said.

Humorously but firmly, Ms. Walsh, 40, said, “I was not part of that revival.” And her character, a troll priestess named Kookamanga, remained idle.

She is now the executive director at the Asian Cultural Council in New York, a cultural exchange organization that awards grants to artists, scholars and professionals in the arts and humanities.

Since the wedding five years ago they moved from Ms. Walsh’s thimble-size studio apartment on the Upper East Side to a commodious prewar in Hamilton Heights, which better suits their growing family. There is their 3-year-old son, Ryden; one of her two brothers, Mickey, 33, who is living with them; and Toro, their English bulldog. The couple is expecting their second child in August.

“It was exciting going from the studio Roy and I shared to the life we have now — very full and very fulfilled,” Ms. Walsh said.

But almost immediately upon moving into their new home they were surprised to find at least one major blind spot in their relationship, despite having lived together for a year and a half before marrying.

Mr. Prieb was caught off guard by the fact that he and his wife had different philosophies about what he calls “stuff.”

“Miho has a lot of stuff,” Mr. Prieb said. He said it hadn’t been an issue when they shared her apartment because most of her treasures (including essays from high school, a six-inch-tall nunchuck-wielding hamster doll and enough ceramic teapots and cups to keep Alice in Wonderland happy for years) were in storage. When they moved to the larger space, Mr. Prieb said, “I thought it was a great opportunity to be done with the stuff.”

Big mistake.

When Ms. Walsh asked, “Hey, where is that bag of Halloween costumes” or “that bag of gift ribbons and wrapping paper” — silly things, she acknowledges — her husband answered, “They never made it” to the new apartment, she recalled.

Tears followed.

“I’m somebody who hangs onto things, and keeps things, and part of the beauty of moving into the new space was creating a new home, but Roy thought it was a great time to purge,” Ms. Walsh said. “But the purging happened without my knowledge.”

Mr. Prieb said it was a “wake-up call.”

“It was one of those moments, you think you know somebody, but you don’t, or you don’t really appreciate the meaning of certain things to people,” he said.

They discovered something else that would become important in their marriage: scheduling one-on-one time.

When their son was about 7 weeks old (he was not a good sleeper at first, so his parents had also endured seven weeks of sleeplessness), they found a wedding present: a gift certificate to a restaurant that was about to expire. They got a baby sitter and made a Friday night reservation.

4-Year Deals for Unions at Verizon

The contracts, covering workers from Maine to Virginia in Verizon’s landlines division, come after 16 months of tense negotiations that included a two-week strike a year ago to protest the company’s demands for concessions. A ratification vote is expected in the next month.

At a time when many unions are facing demands for pay and pension freezes, Verizon’s main unions — the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — were able to preserve the current pension plan for existing workers.

But the unions did agree that future hires covered by the contracts would no longer receive traditional pensions and would instead have 401(k) accounts with a substantial company match.

The agreements, effective Aug. 1, 2011, to Aug. 1, 2015, include an $800 ratification bonus for those covered: field technicians, call center workers and cable installers.

Larry Cohen, president of the communications workers, criticized what he said was Verizon’s hard-line approach, coming when the company had $2.4 billion in net income in 2011 on revenue of $110 billion.

Mr. Cohen said that while some unions have lost ground in concessionary contracts, “we’ve maintained our living standards in this contract.”

“Because of what’s going on in America, every employer, regardless of its financial wherewithal, believes it’s obligated to cut the costs of front-line employees,” Mr. Cohen said. “But we held our own. This is an incredibly profitable company, and the reality of today in America is if you hold your own, that’s a victory.”

Verizon issued a statement praising the deal. “We believe this is a fair and balanced agreement that is good for our employees as well as for the future of the wireline business,” said Marc C. Reed, Verizon’s chief administrative officer. “It provides competitive wages, valuable benefits and affordable quality health care while giving the company new flexibility to better serve customers and become more efficient.”

The contracts cover workers in Verizon’s traditional landlines operation and its new FiOS Internet and cable operations, but only a handful of workers at Verizon Wireless, the highly profitable cellphone joint venture that is largely nonunion and in which Verizon Communications is the majority shareholder.

Verizon originally pushed for a pension freeze for current workers, significantly higher employee contributions for health coverage, an end to all job security provisions and freedom to do as much outsourcing as it wanted.

As part of the deal, union officials said, the company will maintain the same level of health coverage and the workers will pay 20 percent of their overall health coverage costs, roughly double the old percentage. That provision is expected to increase out-of-pocket health care costs for family coverage by more than $1,000 a year.

Verizon has repeatedly argued that it needed many concessions as a way to reduce costs in its landline business because that division’s consumer base and profit margins have shrunk over the last 10 years. Many customers have dropped fixed-line phones and turned to competing options like mobile phones, cable and Internet calling.

In defending the demand for givebacks, Verizon’s chief executive, Lowell C. McAdam, wrote in a letter to employees last year, “The existing contract provisions, negotiated initially when Verizon was under far less competitive pressure, are not in line with the economic realities of business today.”

Union leaders said the tentative settlement enabled them to preserve most job security protections and still limit some outsourcing, although some union members could be transferred into different Verizon jobs.

Union officials said the raises would total $5,500 over the life of the four-year contracts. They said the typical Verizon union member earns $70,000 a year before overtime.

For future hires under the tentative agreements, Verizon would provide a dollar-for-dollar match in 401(k) contributions up to the first 6 percent of pay, and then, depending on the company’s performance, it might add as much as 3 percent more in profit-sharing. Union officials said Verizon also agreed to reinstate 37 workers it had fired after accusing them of misconduct during the 2011 strike.

The two unions called their members back after two weeks of striking even though there was no agreement partly because union leaders saw how dug in Verizon had become and partly because they said Verizon had finally agreed to focus on the major issues in the negotiations.

Under the settlement, there is no raise for the first year of the contract, which has already passed, a 2.25 percent raise in the second year, 2.75 percent in the third year and 3 percent in the fourth year.

The two unions cited Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and George Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, for their work over the last two months in helping to reach the deal.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article gave Verizon’s net income in 2011 as $10.2 billion. The actual figure is $2.4 billion. The $10.2 billion figure includes  profits attributable to Vodafone, which owns a 45 percent share of Verizon Wireless.