Labor Relations

Teamster Union President Ron Carey, amid a hotly contested reelection race against the son of the late Jimmy Hoffa, appeared at an East Los Angeles rally Sunday to urge striking workers to organize boycotts of the nation's No. 1 tortilla company. Carey, president of the nation's largest private-sector union, used the flatbed of a truck as his podium to deride Gruma USA, maker of Mission and Guerrero brand tortillas.

The mass firings at AT&T were supposed to start on Jan. 16, though for reasons deemed humane, some executives gave workers the option of finding out their status on Dec. 21, the Thursday before Christmas. For the 389 people in the tax department--most of them terror-stricken at the coming of the latest company purge--this was a gut-churning choice. What if you got canned? That would turn your whole family inside out during the holidays.

The bastions of union strength have long been such big Northern cities as New York, Detroit and Chicago, but America's labor activists are now focusing on a new metropolis: Los Angeles. Both among ground-level labor organizers and at the top ranks of the new regime running the AFL-CIO, Los Angeles is seen as possessing explosive potential for union growth. Among the big targets for organizing are the garment-making and food-processing industries.

Grinning Democrats in California's Capitol have been tracking Pat Buchanan and parroting "Go Pat Go." It's not just that they're pulling for Pitchfork Pat because they think he'd make a terrific punching bag as the Republican presidential nominee. They are, although as Assembly Democratic strategist Bill Cavala says, "the guy with a message always makes me nervous." No, the real reason they're quietly rooting for Buchanan is that they love it when a Republican talks dirty about big business.

The labor dispute between the United Farm Workers union and California's strawberry growers is beginning to heat up, but so far it is strictly a public relations battle. UFW officials hope that by exposing alleged abuses--such as a lack of toilets and clean drinking water for fieldworkers, along with low wages and scarce health insurance--they can embarrass the industry into sitting down to negotiate a contract.

The Ralphs Grocery Co. chain, in a sharp departure from the supermarket industry's history of tensions with the United Farm Workers, will throw its support today behind the union's drive to improve the lot of the 20,000 fieldworkers who harvest California's strawberry crop.

'Yani! Te busca!" Yanira Merino's sister calls from the front door of the aging wood-frame house they share with their kids in an old part of Pasadena. It's not yet 10:30 on a chilly Sunday morning, and the first appointment of the day is waiting on the porch. Merino was up very late and must leave for a business meeting soon, but she wouldn't think of canceling a date for something as selfish as more rest.

Many managers these days are supervising a radically different mix of employees as freelancers, temps and independent contractors replace full-time workers. This can create new tensions in the workplace and new challenges for bosses. To keep up productivity and reward good work, many supervisors are adjusting their management style in large and small ways.

Executives who breathe a sigh of relief after handing out all the pink slips, figuring that the hard part is over, have a nasty surprise in store. Workers who remain after a sizable layoff are likely to feel guilty, stressed, angry, sad, fearful, insecure, intimidated--and often resentful about doing the added work that will be necessary to make up for those who are gone. Handled improperly, this so-called survivor syndrome can seriously impair a company's campaign to return to health.

Fourteen people were injured during a union protest for higher wages at Disneyland Paris, park officials said. The demonstration Sunday was the first involving injuries since the park opened in April 1992. Officials said protesters tried to force their way inside the park. Park attendants "tried to block them, and there were injuries" among both protesters and personnel on duty, said a spokesman for the park's parent company, Euro Disney. Eighteen protesters may be fired, the spokesman said.