Unions

Ailing Twinkies maker Hostess Brands Inc. is going toe-to-toe with its workers' unions in a courtroom clash that the company said may lead to its liquidation. Hostess is trying to persuade a federal bankruptcy judge in New York to allow it to reject existing collective bargaining agreements with the Teamsters and bakers' unions. The maker of Ho Hos, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, three years after emerging from its last bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON - Targeting an issue popular with women, a key voter group, Mitt Romney assailed President Obama's leadership on education Wednesday and blamed teachers unions for problems facing American schools. The Republican presidential candidate is making education the focus of his brief campaign schedule this week. On Thursday, he will tour a charter school in Philadelphia and lead a discussion on education in the most heavily Democratic part of the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

"Magic City," an attractive, but frustrating new series from Starz about a Miami Beach luxury hotel, is the third drama this TV year, after the quickly dead "The Playboy Club" and the probably not returning "Pan Am," to be set in the middle of the 20th century. While on the face of it these shows seem like an attempt to draft off the cultural energy of "Mad Men," and may well be, they also represent in their small, halting way the birth of a new American genre, to join the western and the gangster film - midcentury stories of big dreams and dreamers, of prosperity and its undercurrents, set at the corner of Eisenhower and Kennedy, furnished with Eames chairs and cigarette machines.

LONDON - With investor confidence draining away and the value of the euro plunging, Europe struggled anew Wednesday to come up with a united game plan to keep its currency union intact and its economies from collapsing. Competing visions embraced by the continent's political heavyweights, France and Germany, clashed at an informal summit of European Union leaders with little chance of reconciliation even as fears grew that Greece could be forced out of the Eurozone and into a chaotic default.

Officials of the carpenters union headquarters in Washington took over several locals in Orange and Riverside counties Wednesday, surprising local union leaders. As the national union changed locks on doors and took control of records at the locals, union officials in this area were told that some locals will be merged and that all seven locals will be managed from Los Angeles.

The fierce battle that U.S. unions waged against the North American Free Trade Agreement, despite ending in bitter defeat, may give new vigor to the American labor movement. Unions emerged from the fight against NAFTA with new potential allies, both at home and across international borders.

The National Labor Relations Board in Los Angeles dealt a blow Tuesday to an organizing campaign aimed at unionizing gravediggers who work at 10 cemeteries operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "The cemetery operations are integral to the Catholic Church's religious mission and rituals" and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Act, said the board in an opinion signed by Regional Director Victoria E. Aguayo.

On the picket line outside Caterpillar's sprawling tractor plant, John McCoy uses his head to display his disdain for his employer of 29 years: He wears a John Deere cap. Just up the street, a union billboard painted in Caterpillar's bold yellow colors announces: "You are entering a war zone. Caterpillar vs. its UAW employees." Such are the symbols of the nation's longest ongoing labor confrontation.

Shortly after his release from prison four years ago, Julio Silva entered the apprenticeship program in the Ironworkers Union Local 433 in La Palma. To his alarm, he learned that ironworkers called all first-year apprentices "punk." He had been an East Los Angeles gang member, a drug user, and a car burglar in and out of jail. In that world, a "punk" was someone's prison sex slave. But Silva tried not to let it bother him. The more he worked at his new job, the more his skills improved.

Dateline Sacramento, Jan. 5, 2012: The state of California today filed for federal bankruptcy protection, citing a worsened economy that has blown out even the most pessimistic assumptions about its long-term financial picture. Would that be a nightmare come true ? or the only logical way out of the state's deep fiscal crisis? For now the question is purely academic because federal law doesn't allow states to file for bankruptcy. But that could change if some conservative factions prevail in Washington.

Dolores Huerta runs on righteous ferocity the way cars run on gasoline. The woman who co-founded the United Farm Workers union 50 years ago with Cesar Chavez has harried, prodded, hectored, rallied and protested. She's been arrested more than a score of times, and once, picketing in San Francisco, she was beaten so badly by a police officer that her spleen was ruptured. You'd be hard-pressed to tell, the way she bounces around the Central Valley, a woman on many missions. So, can she stand still next week in Washington long enough for President Obama to present her with the Medal of Freedom, along with honorees such as Toni Morrison, John Glenn and Bob Dylan?

Re "An imperfect union," Opinion, May 18 Troy Senik says that the California Teachers Assn. is the state's most powerful union. How does he define powerful? With pay? At an average salary of $68,000, teachers are not the best-paid public employees. Plus, starting salaries for beginning teachers average about $35,000. And our pensions? Remember, teachers kick in about 8% of each paycheck to the State Teachers Retirement System; their employers contribute another 8%. What public employees do that?

The NFL Players Assn. has accused the NFL of putting a secret salary cap in place in the uncapped 2010 season — a violation of antitrust laws — and is seeking monetary damages that could climb into the billions. The union filed suit against the league Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, accusing the NFL of collusion for conspiring to set a $123-million cap for 2010, when owners would have required the consent of players to do so. The NFL flatly denied the claim.

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney used a Latino business gathering as a forum to assail President Obama's leadership of the economy and blame teachers unions for problems facing American education. The Republican presidential candidate is making education the focus of his brief public campaign schedule this week. On Thursday, he will tour a charter school in Philadelphia and lead a discussion on education in the most heavily Democratic part of that swing state. In Washington on Wednesday, Romney assured Latino businessmen and women that they would never have to “wake up every day, wondering if the president is on your side.” Photos: The search for Romney's running mate Obama, he charged, “has decided to attack success,” apparently referring to attack ads by the president's reelection campaign that targeted Romney's business record as an executive of Bain Capital, a private investment firm.

By the 2013 season, all NFL players will be required to wear knee and thigh pads. Or will they? NFL owners voted Tuesday to make those pads mandatory, but the NFL Players Assn. quickly responded that changes such as those need to be collectively negotiated, opening another of several battlefronts between the league and the union. "While the NFL is focused on one element and health and safety today, the NFLPA believes that health and safety requires a comprehensive approach and commitment," the union said in a written statement.

SACRAMENTO — Nearly a year after a Kern County oil worker was sucked underground and boiled to death, state authorities have turned to the two leading oil companies involved in the incident to investigate it. On Monday, the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources released a report outlining the circumstances of the worker's death, and subsequent oil spills and eruptions, in a field where Chevron and another operator were using steam extraction....

Starbucks a hub of union-busting and worker exploitation? Say it ain't so, Howard Schultz! The Starbucks chief executive, who actively cultivates a socially progressive image, is in the cross hairs of a new-media campaign designed to bolster union representation at the retail giant and beyond. For five years, Starbucks has been the target of a limited but sometimes nasty unionization drive that has tarnished its reputation for high-minded benevolence.

Why are unions good in Poland--and bad in the United States? ROGER McKENZIE Paso Robles

The newly formed SAG-AFTRA board of directors has confirmed David White as the merged union's sole national executive director. The national board of SAG-AFTRA voted overwhelmingly Sunday to select White for the job, approving a new three-year contract. White, the former Screen Actors Guild executive director, was expected to assume the new position as the chief administrative officer for the union of about 160,000 members. He had been serving as co-national executive director with former American Federation of Television and Radio Artists leader Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, who announced last month that she was resigning.

Question: My wife and I recently returned from a nine-day trip to London, and we noticed that all the hotel staff was from non-British European countries and a few from countries in Africa. We also noticed that all the staff at the restaurants and some of the staff at the pubs where we ate and enjoyed their ales were from other European countries. Is this because these are jobs British workers do not want to do, or are there other reasons for this? Ben Juarez Los Angeles Answer: If you don't believe London is a world city, take a look at its restaurants.