Labor Leaders

Time is running out on County Executive John G. Gary's plan to recast Anne Arundel County's $750 million retirement system.The County Council last night was poised to propose a slew of amendments to what has become the most complex bill the Republican administration has introduced or that the Republican-majority council has considered.Those would come on the heels of 20 proposed amendments from the administration. The council was to consider them late last night.Gary said during his 1994 campaign that he would cut personnel costs, which account for 75 percent of Anne Arundel's budget.

The County Council last night came to the defense of beleaguered public employees for the first time in months, a signal that its members think the Gary administration's personnel reforms may be too aggressive.The council, criticized by labor leaders recently for cleaving to the Republican administration's cost-cutting labor policy, was poised to formally ban Anne Arundel Fire Department captains and lieutenants from the union that has represented them for 26 years.Instead, council members approved unanimously four amendments written by Councilman William C. Mulford II, an Annapolis Republican, that would allow the 100 displaced officers to form new bargaining units.

The County Council topped months of labor strife yesterday by giving the Gary administration a clear victory over Anne Arundel's two largest public safety unions, rejecting all but labor's smallest demands.The binding decision sets the terms of a one-year agreement with more than 1,000 county police officers and firefighters. It may also drag the council into what has been a high-profile fight between County Executive John G. Gary and public-safety employees in recent months.Indeed, most council members find themselves the target of union wrath that until now was directed at a Republican administration that has made cutting personnel costs a top priority.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening yesterday told union leaders who represent state employees that he intends to sign an executive order giving them a limited version of collective bargaining rights.As described by the union leaders, the order would allow state workers to be grouped into bargaining units and require managers to meet with them to discuss wages, hours, benefits and working conditions.But any agreement they worked out would not be binding on the governor or the legislature, and there would be no provisions for dispute resolution.

The whispers are growing louder.After reviewing County Executive John G. Gary's strict budget plan for the coming fiscal year, which he presented last week with warnings of future hardship, powerful local constituencies are plotting to kill a sacred cow: Anne Arundel's tax ceiling.No organized movement has formed to engineer a ballot drive that could repeal the anti-tax measure. But for the first time since 1992, when 70 percent of county voters approved the tax limit, labor leaders and education advocates are talking seriously about waging a political fight against it."

Calling it a "civil defense message," Anne Arundel's police union launched a radio advertising campaign yesterday pointedly accusing County Executive John G. Gary of undermining public safety."

LONDON -- This week, Tony Blair goes to America.The visit of the leader of Britain's opposition Labor Party would normally be something of a lap of honor, as he meets with business leaders and gets a White House greeting from President Clinton.Instead, Mr. Blair may find himself dealing with what appear to be flimsy allegations of "un-American activities."According to a report in yesterday's Sunday Express, the ruling Conservative Party has sent a pamphlet titled "Tony Blair's Un-American Activities" to Republican supporters in the United States.

The money is so tight in Anne Arundel that $36,250 -- about .005 percent of the county's annual budget -- has become a matter of political principle in a simmering labor dispute.County Executive John G. Gary, who vowed that there would be no raises this year for the county's 3,500 employees, has by his own authority changed the job descriptions of 13 workers. The result is annual increases totaling $36,250 for four county attorneys, four clerks, three planners, a civil engineer and a billing supervisor.

ON THE FUYANG ROAD, China -- From a distance the peasants look like a straggly army, thousands of them spreading out into the fields along the road, loosely organized around red flags flapping from thin bamboo poles.In the long light of a winter morning they trudge through the dirt, struggling to level the land that will become a highway leading to a boomtown 20 miles north. They could be a road crew in any developing country except that here in China they are acting out a milleniums-old ritual: putting in weeks of unpaid, forced work -- usually known as corvee labor.

Against strong opposition from Gov. Parris N. Glendening, business and labor leaders have been working quietly in Annapolis to win the legislature's go-ahead on a plan to pump dredge material into a deep area of the Chesapeake Bay known as the Deep Trough.The site was one of five initially proposed by the Maryland Port Administration for the unpopular task of disposing of mud and silt scooped out of the state's 126 miles of shipping channels.But shortly before the 1996 General Assembly convened last month, Governor Glendening ordered state officials to scrap Deep Trough as a disposal site.