Contract Workers

IT IS TROUBLING to see 170 employees of Broadway Services Inc. still denied the wage increase the city promised contracted service workers more than a year ago. After all, that company supported the city's decision to improve the floor wage paid to janitors, cafeteria workers and others who are employed by private companies to work at city buildings.Broadway Services president Tom McGowan even predicted some companies might not pass on their increased labor costs to the city because they would want to remain competitive in bidding for city work.

The Senate Finance Committee voted unanimously Thursday for a proposed law that would require state licensing of medical staffing companies after a radiographer was accused of exposing hundreds of Marylanders to hepatitis C. In a telephone call after the vote, Sen. Thomas Middleton, a Charles County Democrat, said that chances are high it will pass the full Senate as well, given the case of David Kwiatkowski, who allegedly stole syringes of drugs...

Simstar Inc. President David Reim is "an entrepreneur of the '90s," writes journalist Steve Kaufman in the San Jose Mercury News. "Working with four Macintoshes in the bedroom of his Sunnyvale [Calif.] apartment, he is building a company that makes interactive multimedia software for health care patients."As the company's only employee, he teams up with independent partners. "I simply view myself as a general contractor who manages his subcontractors over a computer network," he told Kaufman.

Corporate service center for XLHealth to open XLHealth, owner of a Medicare health plan for people with chronic conditions, will create a corporate service center in Montgomery Park Business Center in Southwest Baltimore, the company said yesterday. It will employ more than 150 workers. The company owns Care Improvement Plus and is based in the Warehouse at Camden Yards in downtown Baltimore. The service center will house eight departments that provide service to members and health provides, including call centers.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police found the bodies of two Turkish nationals and an unidentified man yesterday in a rural area north of Baghdad, but there were promising reports about a pair of French hostages. Meanwhile, an Iraqi driver employed by the Associated Press was fatally shot in an ambush near his home in Baghdad, the wire service reported. The deaths underscored the perils facing foreigners and Iraqis working for overseas companies here. In recent months, scores of people employed by U.S. government-hired contractors and foreign companies have been kidnapped or ambushed.

Hot jobs: Cornell University School of Hotel Administration reports that 99 percent of its graduating seniors last month will walk into full-time jobs. That stacks up against national averages that 74 percent of bachelor's degree candidates will have a job within a year and 83 percent of business school grads will land full-time jobs. Cornell reports average starting salaries of $30,000, plus signing bonuses.Hot fingers: Employees will swipe $400 billion worth of goods and services from American companies this year, predicts the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in Waltham, Mass.

It was "Black Friday" for hundreds of Anne Arundel County workers who got pink slips yesterday as part of County Executive Robert R. Neall's plan to shrink county government.Department heads distributed 372 letters to contractual employees, workers whose positions will be cut and those in danger of being bumped from a job by someone with more seniority.Mr. Neall announced Wednesday that he will cut 440 positions, including 120 vacant slots, effective June 30 as part of a government reorganization plan to save $5 million.

The Baltimore school board agreed last night to pay about 2,000 nonunion school employees $7.70 an hour as of July 1 and give them the opportunity to obtain health benefits.The agreement, pushed by Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, means the school board is complying with a 1994 city law that gives city contract workers a "living wage" -- one well over the minimum wage of $5.15.The group of workers most helped by the agreement are food-service workers and bus attendants, who work about 20 hours a week and receive no benefits.

Baltimore Marine Industries Inc. said yesterday that it has won several contracts that will bring the shipyard more than $9 million in new work.The contracts are one more step in BMI's ascent since it was created out of the former BethShip. Bethlehem Steel sold the shipyard to a New York-based merchant banking fund in 1997.Since then, BMI has boosted employment from 25 to 750 -- about 50 more than BethShip had when it was put up for sale -- and 150 contract workers. The turnaround has come with help from workers, who agreed to a 75-cent hourly wage cut, to $12.75, in return for profit-sharing.

Training still vitalDespite the recession, training and development remain as important strategies for corporations that want to be competitive.That's why U.S. businesses spend $210 billion annually in employer-based training -- and intend to keep doing so."The new economy has profound implications for the way we use people on the job," writes economist Anthony Patrick Carnevale in his book, "America and the New Economy: How New Competitive Standards are Radically Changing American Workplaces" (Jossey-Bass, $29.95)

General Motors Corp., reeling from $10.6 billion in losses last year, will fire hundreds of its U.S. salaried employees starting next week, according to people familiar with the plan. GM's engineering staff has been told all leaves have been canceled. They have been ordered to report for work Tuesday morning - what employees already are calling "Black Tuesday" - with company cars and keys. GM wouldn't comment on Tuesday's meeting, but insiders said only the engineering staff is affected - for now. The firings will be followed by another round in April, according to at least three GM people with direct knowledge of the plan who declined to be identified because it hasn't been made public.

THE STATE'S new budget for the Department of Juvenile Services has set the agency up for more failure. It reads like Year Two of a reform blueprint that hasn't yet had a Year One. This year's crop of children - and more - could thus be left in the lurch. The General Assembly should insist on a more practical approach, one that ensures adequate facilities remain in place while the department works to improve care in the future. It would mean a real increase in funding, as Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has pledged, not a reverse bait and switch.

One worker lost the tip of a right finger and another fractured a leg and ankle in two separate industrial accidents that occurred within three hours yesterday at Lehigh Cement Co. in Union Bridge, authorities said. The workers were out-of-state contract employees performing scheduled maintenance when they were injured, company officials said. "This is pretty unusual," said Brian Forsythe, production manager at the plant. He said he couldn't recall an accident in the two years he'd been there.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police found the bodies of two Turkish nationals and an unidentified man yesterday in a rural area north of Baghdad, but there were promising reports about a pair of French hostages. Meanwhile, an Iraqi driver employed by the Associated Press was fatally shot in an ambush near his home in Baghdad, the wire service reported. The deaths underscored the perils facing foreigners and Iraqis working for overseas companies here. In recent months, scores of people employed by U.S. government-hired contractors and foreign companies have been kidnapped or ambushed.

Federal authorities brought the first civilian criminal case involving prison abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday, charging a former CIA contract worker in the beating death of an Afghan prisoner who died three days after he voluntarily surrendered at the gates of a U.S. military base. A four-count indictment handed up in Raleigh, N.C., accused David A. Passaro, 37, of beating a prisoner "using his hands and feet, and a large flashlight" during two days of interrogations about rocket attacks aimed at the Asadabad military base in northern Afghanistan.

Michael Lee Shawyer, a carpenter for a general contracting firm and an avid fisherman and bowler, drowned with two other workers in a flash flood Wednesday while repairing a culvert under Interstate 70 in Woodlawn. The Cavetown, Washington County, resident was 22. Mr. Shawyer was born in Hagerstown and raised in Boonsboro, where he attended high school. Since 1999, he had worked for Concrete General Inc. of Gaithersburg. He was an avid trout fisherman and was a regular Saturday night bowler.

The Baltimore school board agreed last night to pay about 2,000 nonunion school employees $7.70 per hour as of July 1 and give them the opportunity to obtain health benefits.The agreement, pushed by the Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, means the school board is complying with a 1994 city law that gives city contract workers a "living wage" -- one that is well over the minimum wage of $5.15.The group of workers most helped by the agreement are food service workers and bus attendants, who work about 20 hours a week and receive no benefits.

General Motors Corp., reeling from $10.6 billion in losses last year, will fire hundreds of its U.S. salaried employees starting next week, according to people familiar with the plan. GM's engineering staff has been told all leaves have been canceled. They have been ordered to report for work Tuesday morning - what employees already are calling "Black Tuesday" - with company cars and keys. GM wouldn't comment on Tuesday's meeting, but insiders said only the engineering staff is affected - for now. The firings will be followed by another round in April, according to at least three GM people with direct knowledge of the plan who declined to be identified because it hasn't been made public.

More than 60 parents, union workers and activists gathered last night to plan a course of action that they hope will stave off the deep cuts Baltimore school system leaders have said will have to take place because of a looming budget deficit. Members of the political action group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now convened the group for a Stop the School Cuts Campaign meeting, where frustrated community members protested, among other things, the city school system's plan to lay off as many as 1,000 employees beginning next week.