Union Leaders

With a final fist pump and cry of "Beat Duke!" retired Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams said goodbye to graduating seniors Thursday, just before their degrees were conferred at commencement. A tearful Williams said his players had told him this year's graduating class was great. "So I decided to go out with you," he said. College Park students took Williams' rising fist as a cue to flip the tassels on their graduation caps. The state's flagship university graduated 7,475 students Thursday, handing out 5,545 bachelor's degrees and 1,930 graduate degrees.

Anne Arundel County's public safety unions filed a lawsuit against the county Friday, in response to a law altering binding arbitration in collective-bargaining disputes. The legislation was drafted by County Executive John R. Leopold and approved by the County Council last month. It gives the council the final say in labor disputes. The council voted unanimously to approve the bill, but several members said they voted for the bill only with the addition of two key amendments, which Leopold vetoed and signed the bill into law as originally written.

Union leaders representing hundreds of workers at a Giant Food distribution center in Jessup said the operator has given them oral notice that part of the facility would be shut down, resulting in hundreds of job losses. The company that runs the dry goods distribution facility denies giving workers official notice of impending layoffs but declined to answer questions about shuttering the dry goods distribution facility. Giant, the region's largest grocer, announced last year that it would outsource the dry goods business at the facility to New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Grocers.

Maryland public-sector unions want to send a message to their counterparts in Wisconsin: "We're with you. " Several of the largest Maryland state employee groups plan to rally in Annapolis on Tuesday to show solidarity with employees in Wisconsin, who are protesting the effort by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to take away collective-bargaining rights from public-sector unions. Among the many signs draped over a railing in the rotunda of the Wisconsin state capitol is a yellow bedsheet with the words, "Baltimore is here with you. " While the efforts of Walker and Wisconsin's Republican state legislature would be unlikely to find much legislative support in deeply Democratic Maryland, union leaders here say it reflects a rising national trend against government employee unions.

Jack Hook, a trombonist who was also the longtime secretary-treasurer of Local 40-543 of the American Federation of Musicians of Metropolitan Baltimore, died Tuesday of a ruptured aneurysm at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Towson resident was 76. Mr. Hook, who was born in Baltimore and raised on St. Paul Street, graduated in 1952 from City College. Mr. Hook didn't start studying and playing the trombone until he was a teenager. "He was largely self-taught and held no degrees in music," said his daughter, Susan L. "Lorrie" Loveland, who lives in Parkville.

The Baltimore Teachers Union released Tuesday night a second tentative agreement of a landmark contract that, though fairly unchanged, offers more details about how initiatives that teachers have opposed would be implemented. The new contract, obtained by The Baltimore Sun shortly after it was released to union members, highlights minor language changes from the original agreement, with the most substantial revisions addressing specifically how teachers would climb a new four-tiered career ladder.

More than 50 Filipino teachers and a host of supporters shared with the Baltimore City school board Tuesday night emotional stories about not having their contracts renewed this school year and being denied due process in fighting for their jobs. Members of the Baltimore Teachers Union and Filipino Educators of Maryland accompanied the teachers to the board meeting, where union officials asserted that teachers were "being treated like trash," in what they called arbitrary decisions by principals not to renew contracts.

Legislation to change the fire and police pension system could save Baltimore $400 million over five years, according to a report prepared by financial experts hired by the city. Union leaders and city officials are expected to testify before the City Council's taxation and finance committee today on the bill, which was drafted by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration, Councilwoman Helen Holton and Councilman William H. Cole IV. The hearing comes at a tense time: Council members are expediting the passage of the measure, which must be signed into law by the end of the fiscal year on June 30 if the cash-strapped city is to avoid a $165 million bill — $64 million more officials have budgeted.

Parents expressed outrage Thursday that someone at Baltimore's George Washington Elementary School changed thousands of answers on state standardized tests in a cheating scandal that is calling into question the school's hard-fought achievements. "It's deceiving," said Linda Thompson, a mother who was picking up her first-grader at the Southwest Baltimore school that was awarded a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence designation in 2007. "I feel cheated." Thompson said she has always boasted about her daughter's Blue Ribbon school but said she believes the incident will bring into doubt students' recent gains.