Labor Relations

Here's an update on the 2010 free-agent class with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire, et al.: There isn't going to be one. The entire league is buzzing about The Lockout of 2011, as if David Stern just rode across the sky in a flaming chariot with a scythe, spelling "Repent by 2011" with his exhaust. "I think it's going to be very, very extreme, because I think that the times are extreme," former super-agent David Falk told the New York Times.

New York Times Co. executives have threatened to shut down the Boston Globe if the newspaper's employees don't agree quickly to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said Friday. Executives from the New York company, which owns the Globe, met this week with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, the Globe reported. Boston Newspaper Guild President Daniel Totten said the concessions could include pay cuts, the end of company pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees.

After weeks of back-channel talks, Hollywood's biggest actors union and the major studios appear to have broken their logjam and could be close to striking a deal on a contract, according to people close to the situation. The agreement would come as a breakthrough for the Screen Actors Guild, whose members have been working without a contract for nine months as various attempts at negotiations with the studios collapsed.

For Hollywood actors, the third act was anticlimactic. After a year of warring with studios, another union and even among themselves, Hollywood's actors finally reached an accord Friday for a new labor contract, signaling an end to a costly drama that roiled the entertainment industry just as it tumbled into the worst economic downturn in decades.

Chrysler cleared a major hurdle in its bid to stave off bankruptcy by reaching key labor deals Sunday with its unions in the U.S. and Canada. A tentative pact with the United Auto Workers -- details were undisclosed -- came just hours after membership of the Canadian Auto Workers union ratified a deal late Sunday that could save Chrysler close to $200 million a year.

The management of the Boston Globe threatened late Sunday to begin the process of shutting down the newspaper in a dispute with its unions over $20 million in cuts. The Globe's owner, New York Times Co., gave its biggest union a copy of a notice it was prepared to file Monday if it was unable to agree on concessions by midnight Sunday. A 60-day shutdown notice is required under federal law. The deadline passed without word from either side.

On the eighth floor of the Screen Actors Guild headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard, interim Executive Director David White is pacing his new office, marshaling arguments in support of the union's recently negotiated film and TV contract. "It's a good contract with solid gains," said White, who was installed in late January after moderates on the union's board orchestrated a revolt against the former leadership.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and two other senators have emerged as focal points of an intense lobbying campaign aimed at heading off a proposed compromise over "card check," the controversial legislation that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers. The bill has been the top priority of organized labor, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has earmarked $20 million over two years to kill it.

Workers at a hospital and two nursing homes in Hollister, Calif., have voted to remain in the Service Employees International Union rather than join a rival group launched by former officers of the giant labor organization. The election was the latest skirmish between the SEIU and the upstart National Union of Healthcare Workers, which has filed election petitions to represent nearly 100,000 employees in California.

Several of the nation's biggest trade associations have fired a warning shot across the bow of the Port of Los Angeles, urging it to cease lobbying efforts to change a federal law that could greatly affect the way cargo is hauled into and out of the nation's seaports. The warning came Tuesday in a letter signed by 24 groups representing U.S. retailers, agricultural interests, apparel and textile firms, trucking groups and logistics officials. It's a response to the port's recent hiring of Atlanta-based Gephardt Group to try to change part of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act to help reduce air pollution at the port.