Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Monday, August 18, 1997
The Carpenters Union will hold a strike vote for its members on Saturday. Hawaii carpenters
to take strike voteIf a new contract isn't hammered out by 4 a.m. Sept. 2, the union will shut down Hawaii's construction industry, Union leader Walter Kupau said last week. Negotiations that broke off three weeks ago are scheduled to resume Aug. 26.
For the first time since the 1960s, the Carpenters Union is negotiating jointly with Operating Engineers Local 3, which represents heavy equipment operators. Members of each union sit on each others negotiating teams. The arrangement stops management from playing one union against the other, Kupau said. Local 3's contract also expires in about two weeks. Its talks with management resume Wednesday.
About 48 percent of Hawaii's 6,800 union carpenters are idle, while Local 3 said about one-third of its 3,500 members are without work.
WASHINGTON -- Talks resumed today between United Parcel Service and the Teamsters union, the 15th day of a strike that has crippled small package deliveries and cost the company $650 million. UPS, Teamsters
return to bargaining table"We're working very hard to make this strike part of history," federal mediator John Calhoun Wells said.
About 185,000 UPS workers went on strike Aug. 4 to demand full-time status for more part-time staff and in protest against a proposal to change their pension funds.
After marathon talks over the weekend, UPS chairman James Kelly said today that a settlement was closer, but he forecast the strike could last much longer if negotiations broke off this week.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co., pinched by price cuts in an increasingly competitive personal-computer market, today reported a 45-percent gain in third-quarter profit that was well below expectations. Hewlett-Packard said it earned $617 million, or 58 cents a share, in the three months ended July 31, up from $425 million, or 40 cents a share a year ago. But profits would have risen only 11 percent if the company hadn't set aside $135 million last year to shed its disk-drive business. In other news ...