Clerical Workers

Chasing a more convenient time zone and a pool of affordable workers, Hyundai Motor America has chosen St. Louis as the site for a $15-million national operating center for its new in-house finance company. Dennis D. Lamont, chief operating officer of Hyundai Motor Finance Co., said that while he and his administration team will be at Hyundai Motor America headquarters on Talbert Avenue here, the credit and loan processing work will be located in St.

An incentive plan that would award tollway employees with bonuses of up to $70,000 for generating new revenue or savings on the county's toll roads is expected to be considered next week by the Transportation Corridor Agencies. Under the plan, the agency's 44 employees would be awarded bonuses ranging from 5% of their annual pay for clerical workers to 50% for executives, if certain criteria are met.

Clerical workers and the representatives of 14 shipping lines averted a strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach late Friday night when they reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract. The deal gives shipping lines what they want: the right to add new technology that will allow customers more efficient access to information they need to move products.

When Mitzi Ferguson's employer, Archive Corp. in Costa Mesa, bought Cipher Data Products, Ferguson dealt with the lawyers working on the deal. Daily, on the phone, she represents the president to the company's board of directors. She arranges the president's personal and professional schedule and is fluent in several software languages. Ferguson embodies where the secretarial profession is headed--away from tasks such as filing and taking dictation toward information management.

The message in the "help wanted" listings couldn't be more clear. "Macintosh experience preferred," advises one. "Excellent PC skills a must," demands another. Even a personnel department posting for Walt Disney Co. calls familiarity with Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase "a plus." There's no use Mickey Mousing around any more; the trend is obvious. Computer skills, even for non-technical, run-of-the-mill office jobs, are rapidly becoming de rigueur.

As did most bettors, a 25-year-old clerk at Hollywood Park thought that Sunday Silence was a sure thing in the eighth race on July 23. So, Inglewood police say, the clerk took $2,000 in track funds and bet on the horse, which won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and was a 1-5 favorite. But Sunday Silence came in second, losing to Prized by three-quarters of a length. The clerk has admitted losing more than $5,000 in track money that day, police said.

An employee at the San Juan Capistrano Mission filed a sexual harassment complaint Friday against Robert McCreary, the chief operations officer in charge of the historical landmark's day-to-day business. The civil complaint, filed on behalf of Donna Fritz, a data-entry operator at the mission, alleges that she has been the victim of sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and battery. McCreary, 40, declined to comment on the complaint.

Working 9 to 5 may not be everyone's idea of a great way to make a living, but in much of Southern California, having clerical skills can just about guarantee a job, a new survey suggests. One-fourth to one-half of employers in most parts of the Southland expect to be hiring office workers during the first six months of 1989, according to a survey of 1,500 California businesses by Irvine-based Thomas Temporaries.

A 16-year-old boy who tried to steal a 12-pack of beer with his friend was shot Wednesday by a liquor store employee who was defending himself, police said. The boy, who was wounded in the shoulder, was taken to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, where he is listed in good condition. The shooting occurred shortly after 11 a.m. in the 15400 block of Chatsworth Street.