Unions

When Sen. Barack Obama campaigned in Nevada two weeks ago, he scored what his campaign described as a political coup: the backing of Maria Elena Durazo, the head of the powerful 800,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. But while the endorsement gave a psychological boost to Obama, it created some blowback for Durazo, considered Southern California's leading voice on labor issues.

Recorded phone calls to voters that falsely imply the Santa Ana teachers union supports a ballot measure extending City Council term limits are "dirty tricks," the union president said Friday. In addition, the recording does not identify who is paying for the call, a violation of state law. Measure D, heavily funded by developers and businesses, would extend City Council members' terms from eight to 12 years.

Contract negotiations are seldom easy, but this could be a new low. Talks between Disney and one of the resort's biggest unions are stalled for an unlikely reason: The parties have spent two months trying to agree on a meeting place. Union leaders believe that rancor over a dispute about housing for workers in the Anaheim Resort District has spilled into talks between Walt Disney Co. and employees at three Disney hotels.

Lawmakers should reject Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed 5% raise for California's politically powerful prison guards' union, the state's nonpartisan fiscal watchdog said Thursday. Correctional officers have received more than adequate pay increases in recent years that have far surpassed those of other state workers, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill said.

Two of the nation's largest unions formally announced a campaign to organize Southern California's 18,000 carwash workers and offered consumers recommendations on how to avoid carwashes that violate minimum wage laws. "We will do whatever it takes to clean up the carwash industry," said Jon Hiatt, general counsel for the AFL-CIO, which launched the campaign with the United Steelworkers.

Heightening fears of an actors strike this summer, one of Hollywood's two major performers unions voted Saturday to break off its 27-year joint bargaining pact with its sister, the Screen Actors Guild, leaving each to negotiate separate new contracts with the major studios. The 11th-hour move by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is the latest thunderclap in Hollywood's winter of discontent, which has seen the television industry upended by a 100-day strike by screenwriters.

KB Home shareholders rejected a labor union proposal to tie executive pay to company performance and approved a measure to limit severance payments. The decision on executive pay was a victory for the Westwood-based builder, which came under fire for giving a multimillion-dollar pay package to its chief executive last year after the stock had fallen by more than half. The votes were taken at KB Home's annual shareholder meeting Thursday and confirmed by company spokeswoman Lindsay Stephenson.

The California Nurses Assn. on Wednesday secured a temporary restraining order against the Service Employees International Union, accusing it of harassing the board members of the Oakland-based group. The two influential nationwide unions have a long, acrimonious rivalry that reached a new height in March after they publicly battled over whether the SEIU should represent more than 8,000 nurses and other healthcare workers in Ohio. The dispute flared again at a labor conference in Dearborn, Mich.

Using a political tool that sidesteps campaign financing limits, Los Angeles labor unions have raised an unprecedented $2.5 million to elect state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas to the county Board of Supervisors. Before voters head to the polls in June, union officials say they will add an additional $1.5 million to the "independent expenditure committee" pot.

Seeking to fend off a challenge to its leadership in the Screen Actors Guild, the group known as Membership First on Friday declared its own slate of candidates who will run in an upcoming board election. The election, which will be decided Sept. 18, could be pivotal in charting the union's course and determining whether, and how soon, the stalemate with the studios ends.