Union Organizers

Police are investigating the beating of five union organizers, and whether the attack was carried out by two dozen members of a union that wants to represent the same US Airways workers. Two men were treated at Methodist Hospital after the attack Wednesday morning at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott hotel. Bottles and chairs were thrown during the attack against organizers from the Transport Workers Union, said Capt. Michael Sinclair of the Southwest Detective Division. "There has not been violence on this scale in air labor affairs for close to 50 years," James Little, acting TWU president, said in a statement.

Banks have traditionally embraced employee unions as they do deadbeat borrowers. "Arrghh," one banker said recently when the subject of unions came up. "Let's just say it's easier to run a bank without them. " Like it or not, banks are increasingly being forced to confront union efforts to organize their employees. It is part of a nascent trend by unions - faced with dwindling membership and a decline in blue-collar, manufacturing jobs - to try to get white-collar employees in service industries to join union ranks.

The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board will hear a discrimination complaint filed by the adjunct instructors at Bucks County Community College. Adjunct faculty - instructors contracted to teach specific courses - filed an allegation last spring alleging that the college had discriminated against several adjunct faculty who had tried to join a union. The complaint says the individuals either were not hired to teach the spring semester or were assigned classes only days before the spring semester started.

ALLENTOWN - Food service workers at three Allentown-area hospitals are on a one-day strike as a national union tries to reach a contract deal with the company that staffs the kitchens. Employees of Sodexo staged the one-day walkout at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, and Good Shepherd and Sacred Heart Hospitals. The Service Employees International Union is trying to reach a deal on wages and benefits with Sodexo. Hospital officials said the strike did not affect service because Sodexo had contingency plans in place.

Union organizers at Kaolin Mushroom Farms Inc. here won their six-year battle to be recognized Monday when the state Supreme Court dismissed the company's final appeal and the Kaolin president agreed to bargain with the union. "It's great," said Richard Mandelbaum, one of the union organizers. "It's wonderful news for Kaolin workers and for all other workers in the same process, and, hopefully, it will have a chilling effect on all other employers who continue to appeal spuriously.

Concerned about their future under electric competition, nearly half of Peco Energy Co.'s employees will begin voting today on whether to become unionized. About 1,100 workers at the Limerick and Peach Bottom nuclear plants will vote on whether to join the Utility Workers Union of America. Votes are expected later this year for 1,200 to 1,500 workers in the consumer energy unit, who also would be represented by the UWUA, and 500 workers at Peco fossil-fuel plants, who are considering the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The 1,200 new closed-circuit cameras that airport officials want to mount throughout Los Angeles Airport (LAX) to thwart terrorists would join cameras already spying on Christian youth groups proselytizing on the stairs of the Lincoln Monument and union organizers discussing strategy on the sidewalks of Virginia Beach, Va.. . . Since 9/11, the government has thrown its formidable weight onto the security side of the tenuous balance between safety and...

Roofers Union Local 30-30B and five of its agents have agreed to an out-of- court settlement with a roofing contractor who claimed he was brutally beaten by the agents after he refused to hire extra roofers for a job. Robert J. Kryszczak, the chief estimator and corporate secretary for Kulzer Roofing Co., claimed he suffered "permanent brain damage" and other injuries as a result of the beating, and is no longer able to work. Kryszczak had been seeking more than $3 million in damages from the union and the five agents, Joseph M. and Stephen Traitz 3rd, sons of union leader Stephen Traitz Jr.; Richard Schoenberger, the elder Traitz's son-in-law; Michael Sullivan; and Joseph F. Thomas Jr. Attorneys for Kryszczak, the union and the defendants declined to disclose terms of the settlement.

Workers at Peco Energy Co.'s Limerick and Peach Bottom nuclear plants have resoundingly rejected unionization, voting 695-228 not to join the Utility Workers Union of America. Another 228 ballots cast in the election Monday were challenged, but they were "not enough to affect the outcome of the election," said Francis W. Hoeber, acting Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board, which announced the results yesterday. "We are thankful that Peco Nuclear employees overwhelmingly voted to reject union representation," Peco president and chief executive officer Corbin A. McNeill Jr. said in a statement.

ALLENTOWN - Food service workers at three Allentown-area hospitals are on a one-day strike as a national union tries to reach a contract deal with the company that staffs the kitchens. Employees of Sodexo staged the one-day walkout at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, and Good Shepherd and Sacred Heart Hospitals. The Service Employees International Union is trying to reach a deal on wages and benefits with Sodexo. Hospital officials said the strike did not affect service because Sodexo had contingency plans in place.

The security firm that employs about 130 security officers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art said Tuesday that it had dropped its bid to block the guards' effort to unionize. AlliedBarton, of Conshohocken, which supplies security services around the country and to many large facilities and institutions in the Philadelphia area, had filed a number of objections to a union election conducted in October. On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board in Washington upheld earlier findings against AlliedBarton and certified the Philadelphia Security Officers Union as the official bargaining representative for the museum's guards.

The big stories here on the beach recently were about sharks and gambling, and Donald Trump and gambling. The prize money in this year's South Jersey Shark Tournament was $336,005, plus side bets. The heaviest shark caught was a 582-pound thresher, winning the top prize of $113,536. Even with the entry fee of $525 a boat and the burning of 250 gallons of gas, that's still a net profit of $112,000 for one fish. My best fish in half a century of angling was probably a six-pound fluke, worth about $15 at current whole-fish prices.

Two Philadelphia companies and one of the nation's largest labor unions - led by a former Philadelphian - are at the heart of fiery debate about union tactics. The union is the purple-shirted, 1.7-million-member Service Employees International Union, led by Andy Stern, a dynamic University of Pennsylvania graduate who got his start in organized labor by heading a social workers' union local in Philadelphia. The two companies are national giants - the food-service monolith Aramark Inc., with its Center City office tower, and one of the nation's largest providers of security guards, AlliedBarton Security Services L.P., of King of Prussia.

Two Philadelphia companies and one of the nation's largest labor unions - led by a former Philadelphian - are at the heart of fiery debate about union tactics.   The union is the purple-shirted, 1.7-million-member Service Employees International Union, led by Andy Stern, a dynamic University of Pennsylvania graduate who got his start in organized labor by heading a social workers' union local in Philadelphia.   The two companies are national giants - the food-service monolith Aramark Inc., with its Center City office tower, and one of the nation's largest providers of security guards, AlliedBarton Security Services L.P., of King of Prussia.

PORK PROCESSORS and ham handlers are mad at celebrity cook and Oprah fave, Paula Deen, who's quite the ham herself. After months spent tracking the drawling, cackling, butter-loving Food Network hostess at book signings and paid appearances across the country, the United Food and Commercial Workers union staged a rally Monday outside Deen's Savannah, Ga., restaurant, The Lady and Sons. The union has targeted Deen because of her endorsement deal with Smithfield Foods, the Virginia-based owner of the world's largest pork-processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. The union has fought with the company for more than a decade in attempts to unionize plant workers.

Last week, state workers flooded Gov. Corzine's office with thousands of calls, intent on sending him a strong message. It goes something like this: How DARE you? The phone blitz, organized by union leaders, was prompted by Corzine's announcement last Monday that state workers won't get a paid day off on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Unlike in Pennsylvania, so-called Black Friday is not on the list of New Jersey official state holidays. But for decades, Garden State governors have nevertheless given the day to government workers - entrenching the four-day holiday weekend in tradition.

A union organizer whose efforts to unionize butchers, bakers, and deli and seafood workers at Genuardi's supermarkets were featured in an Inquirer report on Monday was arraigned yesterday morning on misdemeanor charges of terroristic threats and harassment brought by a union rival. District Justice Francis J. Bernhardt sent Eric Grumbrecht, 42, of Warminster, to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Eagleville after Grumbrecht, an Acme butcher on disability leave, failed to post a $5,000 cash bail, according to Plymouth Township Detective Rocco Wack.

The FBI may take over the investigation into the beating of five union organizers at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott last Wednesday. The men, who were from the Transport Workers Union, were beaten, allegedly by members of the rival International Association of Machinists during a meeting at the hotel. Investigators from the Philadelphia police and the FBI are to meet today to see which agency will handle the investigation, said Lt. John Walker of the Southwest Detective Division.