Union Elections

Officials at the National Labor Relations Board are scheduled to count ballots this morning to see whether Los Angeles Times press operators have authorized union representation by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As many as 300 of the production employees were eligible to vote Thursday and Friday on whether to unionize the newspaper's two printing facilities, in downtown Los Angeles and Costa Mesa.

Los Angeles Times press operators narrowly approved representation by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, according to union election results tallied Saturday by the National Labor Relations Board. The 140-131 vote in favor of the Teamsters' Graphic Communications Conference represented a rare victory for organized labor against a newspaper with a long history of antipathy toward unions.

He's played hustlers, gangsters, an aging hippie and a deaf mute. Now, Seymour Cassel is auditioning for what could be his toughest role yet: president of Hollywood's most powerful union, the Screen Actors Guild. A character actor whose career was nearly derailed more than two decades ago by a little-known stint in federal prison, Cassel has launched an unexpectedly strong challenge to incumbent Alan Rosenberg leading up to the Sept. 20 election.

Members of the Writers Guild of America, West, overwhelmingly reelected Patric M. Verrone as the union's president, giving him and his slate a strong show of support amid contentious contract negotiations with Hollywood studios. Verrone won a second two-year term with 90% of the vote. As expected, he easily defeated lone challenger Kathy Kiernan, a KNX-AM (1070) news writer, who joined the board as a supporter of Verrone's and was not considered a serious challenger.

Maria Elena Durazo, who temporarily took charge of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in March, won election to a full four-year term as the county's labor chief at a meeting of union delegates Monday night. "This happens a year after we buried Miguel," Durazo said of her late husband, Miguel Contreras, the longtime labor federation chief who died in May 2005. "This is something I never envisioned doing."

Union officials and management at the embattled Santa Barbara News-Press agreed Monday to hold a union election Sept. 27. About 50 newsroom employees will decide whether they want to be represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The agreement on the election came after both sides traded accusations of unfair labor practices. More than a dozen employees, including top editors, resigned in July, claiming News-Press owner Wendy McCaw meddled with editorial content.

Contending that his union is making unreasonable demands in contract talks with the city, a member of the team negotiating a new contract for the United Firefighters of Los Angeles wants to oust the labor organization's well-known president. The negotiating team member, 29-year Fire Department veteran Steve Tufts, is challenging President Pat McOsker in union elections that began late last week and conclude Nov. 17. The timing of the challenge is unusual.

When members of the Screen Actors Guild cast their ballots for president in the coming weeks, they will be voting for a leader who can best repair the damage inflicted on Hollywood's largest talent union over the last two years. With 125,000 members, the 76-year-old SAG is still the mightiest union in Hollywood. But its clout has been diminished by internal bickering, a divided boardroom and a disastrous power struggle with a smaller union that represents actors as well as broadcast journalists, disc jockeys and recording artists.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled that employees at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. tire department in Colorado could hold a union election. No date was set for a vote. But if a majority of workers vote for organizing, that would mark the first time in several years that a union has gained a foothold in a U.S. location of the world's largest retailer.

Workers at a Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express in Colorado voted 17 to 1 against union representation, rejecting efforts to establish what would have been the first union inside any Wal-Mart store in the United States. A United Food and Commercial Workers spokesman said the group would ask the National Labor Relations Board to throw the results out, saying no union member was allowed to observe the election and Wal-Mart added employees to dilute the strength of the union supporters.