Labor Relations

About 100 janitors who provide cleaning services at Boeing Co.'s Long Beach facility walked off their jobs to protest what they said were low wages and unfair labor practices by their employer, Aramark Corp. Boeing outsources janitorial services to Philadelphia-based Aramark.

Lemuel Ricketts Boulware, 95, whose tough "take-it-or-leave-it" style of negotiating union contracts for General Electric became known as "Boulwarism." A teacher and author, Boulware handled labor relations for G.E. from 1947 to 1960. His "Boulwarism" involved listening to union demands, comparing wages and benefits at other companies and making one offer from which management would not budge. On Wednesday in Delray Beach, Fla., of the complications of old age.

BMW of San Francisco will pay $4.4 million to about 200 current and former employees under a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board. German Motors, which does business as BMW of San Francisco, "unlawfully implemented new terms and conditions of employment of union-represented employees in 1989," the National Labor Relations Board said Tuesday. The car dealer violated labor laws by invalidly declaring an impasse during contract negotiations, the agency said.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which is trying to organize workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., filed unfair-labor practice charges against the world's largest retailer Tuesday to get it to release documents related to the ouster of its former vice chairman and alleged anti-union efforts. The filing with the National Labor Relations Board aims to "seek justice for workers at Wal-Mart," not financial rewards, according to UFCW spokesman Jim Papian.

RadioShack Corp. said Tuesday that it would pay $29.9 million to settle the unpaid overtime claims of 1,300 managers in California in one of the largest such agreements in the short history of the state's white-collar wage litigation wave. The managers filed a class-action overtime lawsuit more than two years ago, contending that the Fort Worth-based company had improperly exempted them from overtime eligibility.

Back in August, the union representing the city's traffic engineers vowed that on the day of their work action, "Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive." City officials took the threat seriously. Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, they temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals. But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway.

The regional office of the National Labor Relations Board has dismissed all objections by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to a vote by its nurses to unionize, paving the way for organization of registered nurses at the largest private hospital in the West. The victory by the California Nurses Assn. comes as another hospital district in the Antelope Valley officially recognized the right of the same union to represent registered nurses there.

Hundreds of thousands of commuters in Toronto, Canada's largest city, were forced to find alternative ways to work as a labor dispute shut down subways, buses and streetcars. About 800,000 people use Toronto's mass transit system daily. Only seven buses were operating during morning rush hour, instead of the usual 1,300. Subway and streetcar service was also crippled. Ontario's Labor Relations Board declared the strike illegal. The Amalgamated Transit Union said workers would return today.

Employers can prohibit workers from using the office e- mail system for union activ- ities, so long as they prohibit solicitations from any out- side organization, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled. The board said its 3-2 decision sets a new standard that allows employers to prohibit union activity through the company's e-mail system while at the same time permitting office chitchat and personal messages.