Tentative Agreement

A strike planned next week by hundreds of housekeeping, maintenance and food service workers at Johns Hopkins Hospital has been averted after the hospital reached a tentative agreement with the union that represents 1,700 of its workers. Greater Baltimore Medical Center and Sinai Hospital are still trying to reach an agreement with Service Employees International Union 1199E-DC, which represents about 1,000 workers at both hospitals combined. Support staff members at those hospitals are planning a two-day strike beginning Tuesday.

City officials and two labor unions reached a tentative agreement yesterday that would give 2 percent raises to about half the city's workers while also charging them more for health benefits. The membership of the city's two largest unions - the City Union of Baltimore and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 44 - has to approve the agreement. But after a months-long impasse, participants said they were hopeful that they'd made a breakthrough. "We've been working very hard with AFSCME and CUB, and negotiating in good faith with them in a very, very tough budget year," Mayor Martin O'Malley said.

Living with uncertainty is nothing new for 1,100 people who earn a living at General Motors Corp.'s factory in southeast Baltimore. The plant, nearly 70 years old and producing van models with diminishing sales, has been threatened with closure for decades. But the loss of a clause in the workers' new contract may drive another wedge between them and their present job security. General Motors and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract Thursday. But it is unclear if the new agreement retains a clause from the old contract that prohibited the company from closing any plants.

Maryland officials and the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association struck a tentative agreement late yesterday that would reform the state's largest health insurer and preserve its ability to provide national coverage for 3.2 million subscribers. The settlement would lock in CareFirst BlueCross Blue- Shield's nonprofit mission for five years, an important reform goal. And, more important to state officials, it would end a threat by the national association to terminate CareFirst's license to operate as a Blues plan.

Domino Sugar workers, who have been on strike for more than a month, reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract yesterday, and will vote on the pact tomorrow. Union officials declined to provide details of the agreement, which was reached after a federal mediator urged both sides this week to return to the bargaining table. The union's 330 members will vote on the new contract at 9 a.m., said Alex Hamilton, president of Local 392 of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union.

SAN DIEGO - A new labor agreement between West Coast dockworkers and shipping companies is expected to help speed the flow of goods to the nation's stores and manufacturers, just in time for the holiday shopping season. Representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping companies, signed the six-year agreement early yesterday after weeks of negotiations that were ordered by President Bush and led by federal mediators.

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education has reached a tentative agreement in contract talks with the union for 1,500 secretaries and teacher assistants, resolving a two-month impasse. Negotiations had stalled in September over the issue of raises for employees who worked for the school system for more than five years. Negotiators for the union said the group has been overlooked while salaries for teachers, maintenance workers and administrative staff have increased. Under a compromise reached last week, the board said it would create an income bracket representing a 2.5 percent increase over the highest existing pay step.

Members of Carroll County's teachers union have voted overwhelmingly to accept the school board's contract offer of the equivalent of a 4 percent raise over the next two years, despite lingering frustrations and resentment over one of the longest and most contentious bargaining seasons in years. About 800 teachers - or 80 percent of those who took part in the union's ratification vote - cast ballots to approve the contract, union officials said yesterday. More than 1,000 of the 1,450 members of the Carroll County Education Association - about 70 percent - returned their ballots by Monday's deadline.

School board, CASE union reach tentative agreement Nearly seven months after beginning negotiations, the Carroll school board reached a tentative agreement yesterday afternoon with the last of the five unions still seeking a contract. Board negotiators and representatives of the Carroll Association of School Employees signed a proposal that would give the system's 500 nurses, secretaries and instructional assistants a 4 percent raise over the next two years while requiring employees to pay a greater share of health insurance premiums.

US Airways and its pilots union have reached a tentative agreement that would cut $465 million a year from the pilots' wages and benefits, the airline and the union said yesterday. The agreement was reached Wednesday but not made public until yesterday, when it appeared that the two sides were likely to iron out a few remaining issues, union spokesman Roy Freundlich said. Although agreement was reached to cut $465 million a year over 6 1/2 years, the proposed deal will not be sent to the union's membership for approval, he said, until negotiators work out provisions related to job security and other compensation, such as stock options.