Labor Relations

In what Los Angeles school district officials hope is the first of several concessions by labor unions, bus drivers have agreed to take six unpaid days off this fiscal year, officials said Tuesday. The deal is the first time in recent history that a school district union has agreed to furloughs. Last year, the district approved -- but never required -- four unpaid days off for most employees in an attempt to offset a budget shortfall. The Los Angeles Unified School District is facing a nearly $200-million budget shortfall this fiscal year.

After a day's work cleaning one hotel room after another, Maria Valdivia says she's often too fatigued to play with her three children once she gets home. "It pains me to tell my kids I don't have time for them," said Valdivia, a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach. "But sometimes I'm so tired and so achy that I'm just worn out." Valdivia was among the hundreds of hotel workers and labor activists who took to the streets of Long Beach last week to launch a national campaign dubbed Hope for Housekeepers, designed to spotlight what union leaders call substandard working conditions at Hyatt hotels nationwide.

Carmen Padron, a commercial laundry worker in Pomona, said a rival union tried to persuade her to abandon her longtime local. "They should be organizing workers who don't have a union, not harassing us," Padron said. George Ibarra, a hotel worker in Texas, said an organizing drive in San Antonio collapsed when a competing union swooped in and made a deal with management. "That was completely underhanded," Ibarra said. The two incidents are among numerous episodes in a vicious civil war that is roiling the U.S. labor movement and diverting attention from its core goals -- better contracts for workers, new organizing drives and a far-reaching political agenda in Washington.

Carol Lombardini may have the least glamorous job in Hollywood. As the chief negotiator for the major studios, she must find consensus among a group that often has conflicting interests and priorities. But Lombardini, the new president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, has had plenty of time to learn what she's getting into. The 54-year-old former labor attorney has spent most of her career at the alliance, where she worked under her longtime mentor, Nick Counter, who died last week after retiring this year.

The board of the Screen Actors Guild, as expected, rejected the "final offer" by the Hollywood studios for a new contract covering the union's 120,000 members, creating fresh uncertainty about whether and when the seven-month labor dispute will end. The rejection was widely anticipated because the studios' proposal contained a provision that SAG negotiators viewed as a nonstarter. Nonetheless, the move is likely to deepen anxiety in the movie industry, where production activity has already slowed.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger urged union members to vote for contract concessions to Ford Motor Co., saying the automaker can't survive in the long term without major restructuring. Gettelfinger said in a letter to 42,000 hourly Ford workers that the company lost $14.6 billion last year and was burning through $1 billion a month to stay in business.

American Airlines pilots are planning work disruptions short of a nationwide walkout if they're allowed to call a strike at the world's second-biggest carrier. The Allied Pilots Assn. hopes that a strategy of "limited job actions" would improve its chances of being released from talks that began in September 2006, spokesman Sam Mayer said. The National Mediation Board will decide how long negotiations will go on. The preparations highlight growing tensions between AMR Corp.'s American and its 11,500 pilots, who last struck 12 years ago. The union told the mediation board in December that bargaining was deadlocked and said it was studying options for job disruptions.

Hearst Corp. and the union representing its San Francisco Chronicle newsroom staff reached a tentative agreement that may help prevent the newspaper's closing after it lost at least $50 million last year. The California Media Workers Guild said it might vote as soon as Thursday on the accord, which allows Hearst to eliminate jobs without considering seniority and sets terms for severance pay.

The school district has reached a tentative contract deal with its teachers union, resolving a number of lingering issues affecting professional development, school safety and other matters, officials confirmed Tuesday. The agreement includes no new pay raises and follows an earlier agreement to preserve health benefits, which reduced the threat of a strike. "We're grateful that we have come to a tentative agreement," said district spokeswoman Lydia Ramos. She noted that the district faces "a budget crisis that we are trying to make our way through."

The Board of Education voted Tuesday to file an unfair labor practice charge against the teachers union in hopes of winning a court injunction to stop a one-day strike planned for later this month. "Teachers have a contractual obligation to be in our classrooms instructing students every day," Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said in a statement. "This work-stoppage . . . is dangerous, illegal and irresponsible." Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles have acknowledged that the strike violates the union contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District.