New Union

Dissident members of the Major League Baseball Umpires Association have scheduled a meeting in Baltimore on Nov. 2 to make their case for decertification of the existing union and the formation of a new -- less confrontational -- labor organization.The Major League Umpires Independent Organizing Committee has invited all 93 members of the existing union, including the 22 whose resignations were accepted by Major League Baseball after an abortive job action in July, to take part in the meeting, which will be held at the Baltimore Days Inn."

New Windsor and Union Bridge sit as bookends on Carroll County's rural Route 75, separated by four miles and a middle school, a graveyard and a grocery.These are quiet places -- the smallest pair of the county's eight incorporated towns -- but they are slowly stirring.Residents of both towns are feeling their first growing pains since World War II, and many fear the changes could forever alter the face of the remote communities.You see it in the rolling, agricultural landscape of New Windsor as 150 new two-story, aluminum-sided houses dot the hillsides in stark contrast to the town's stately Victorian homes.

A review in last Sunday's Perspective section in The Sun incorrectly identified the reviewer, David Kusnet, as a staff member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He was on its staff from 1974 through 1984.The Sun regrets the error.For a union movement whose membership strength has dropped from 35 to 16 percent of the workforce over the past 40 years, the Teamsters' victory at UPS suggests that labor is calling a halt to its decline.With new leadership at the AFL-CIO and a commitment by major unions to devote more resources to organizing new members, it seems that labor will not go gently into the good night most media and academic pundits had forecast.

In her first official act yesterday as president of the Baltimore Teachers Union, Marcia Brown suggested that her staff "chill out" -- go home to cut the anxiety on the day after her surprise election victory.It was the first of many problems Brown is to face during an abrupt transition of power in the city's largest municipal union.Elected officers assume their posts the day after the vote, by BTU rules that had less consequence when the president was unchallenged or re-elected. But Brown is the first new president since 1978 -- and the union is in the middle of contract negotiations with the city.

MOSCOW - The leaders of Russia and Belarus agreed yesterday to form a "union state" that, while it would not quite merge the governments of the two nations, would tie them to each other economically and politically.Such a plan has long been discussed, particularly in Belarus, where it has been sought eagerly. But the timing of the decision was clearly influenced by election-year politics in Russia, where the Communist-dominated lower house of Parliament voted March 15 to denounce the 1991 accord that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

An AFL-CIO affiliated union has won the right to represent 1,600 Baltimore County white-collar workers, roundly defeating the local chapter of the Maryland Classified Employees Association in a hard-fought election.The new union, called the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees, defeated the incumbent Baltimore County Classified Employees Association (BCCEA) by a vote of 694-222.The new union's parent, the Federation of Public Employees, has 175,000 members nationally and is a subsidiary of the 850,000-member American Federation of Teachers.

Today marks the beginning of another school year for students and educators in Carroll County.And with the new year comes a fresh start for youth, as they prepare to begin the next level of their educational experience.It's also a new year for some local teachers who will leave the classroom and report to the front office to serve the school system in a different capacity.One is Barbara Bankard of Westminster.Ms. Bankard, who spent the last seven years as an extended enrichment resource teacher in Carroll County schools, is the new assistant principal at Mount Airy Middle School.

After a telephone conference call among union officials, their negotiating committee and player representatives from the 22 teams, the NHL Players Association presented what could be its final offer to management yesterday in an effort to resolve the 3-day-old strike.At first it was announced the parties would meet at 8:30 p.m. at the Sutton Place Hotel in Toronto to discuss the offer. But, at 8:15, NHL president John Ziegler left the hotel saying he had been invited to dinner by union executive director Bob Goodenow.

A headline in Wednesday's Evening Sun incorrectly described why members of the Teamsters union were picketing a division of Ryder Systems Inc. They were protesting the company's use of unionized truck drivers who were not members of the Teamsters.In the first nationwide job action by a newly reformed and more-courteous Teamsters union, about 50 unionized drivers protested quietly outside a Ryder System Inc. truck rental store on North Point Boulevard yesterday to call for a nationwide boycott of the Miami-based transportation company.

MOSCOW -- The confusion over the new Commonwealth of Independent States begins, but doesn't end, with its name.The word in Russian is "sodruzhestvo," which can mean either community or commonwealth. In the context of the proclamation, it was evidently meant to mean something resembling the European Community, though the documents allowed a wide leeway in interpretation.The confusion was compounded by the fact that the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Byelarus declared Sunday that the old Soviet Union and all its "norms" ceased to exist as of the signing of the agreement.