Union Leaders

Federal workers would get a 3 percent raise, retirement records would move online and discretionary spending at most Maryland-based agencies would tighten under President Bush's 2008 budget proposal. Meanwhile, retired federal workers with less than 10 years of service and veterans would lose out in health care benefits, according to the budget, which the president unveiled this week. Pay raise: For the second time in a row, the president proposed equal raises for military and civilian workers.

State Sen. Andrew P. Harris isn't just facing a Democratic challenger with name recognition and financial support. On this Sunday afternoon, he's competing against the Ravens. As he makes his rounds with his daughters, knocking on the doors of Cockeysville voters, Harris keeps his interruption of the tackles and touchdowns to less than 30 seconds. "At this point, it's about getting out the vote," he says. But it's also a chance to see how well he and other Republicans are faring against Democratic candidates in the 7th District, which stretches from Middle River to Cockeysville and includes parts of Harford County, and where Democrats have only a slight edge in voter registration.

Ballots were being tallied last night after members of the union representing Baltimore police officers voted to choose a president. Paul M. Blair Jr., president of the city's Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, was challenged by Officers Scott Ripley and Dave Miller. At its headquarters in Hampden, union officials began counting ballots cast by current and retired police officers in the afternoon and had not announced a result by late last night.

The stabbing of two correctional officers Wednesday night has prompted union officials to call on Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to hold a "prison safety summit" on the rise in violence in Maryland's prisons. The stabbings at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup were the third serious attack on correctional officers this year. A prison guard in Hagerstown was killed in January about two weeks after an uprising by 19 inmates at a Cumberland prison left three officers injured. The officers who were stabbed at the Jessup prison Wednesday were flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Lloyd Fox [Sun photographer] The Baltimore police union's board of directors voted to remove and expel its president after finding he "acted inappropriately and outside the scope of his authority to the extreme detriment of the organization," the labor organization said yesterday. The decision came after months of acrimony between Lt. Frederick V. Roussey and the board, which filed internal administrative charges last month. Roussey, who was elected in November 2004, was removed from office late Monday night by a 25-to-2 vote and then expelled in another vote, 22 to 5, the union statement said.

To his detractors, Frederick V. Roussey has run one of the city's most high-profile unions with all the grace of a bull in a china shop, chased by allegations of misconduct. To his supporters, the blunt-spoken police lieutenant "bleeds blue" and is being victimized for upsetting the comfortable status quo of the powerful union that represents more than 4,800 active and retired city officers. Tonight, Roussey will be fighting for his job in a closed-door union meeting in hopes of regaining his post as president of the city's Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 3, a month after the group's board of directors suspended him in an unusual move that has thrown the labor union into turmoil.

John A. Kassakatis, a retired millwright and union official, died of cancer Sept. 17 at his Dundalk home. He was 73. Mr. Kassakatis -- who was called "Kass" or "Johnny K" -- was born in Baltimore and raised in Violetville. He was a graduate of City College and served in the Navy during the Korean War. Mr. Kassakatis was employed as millwright for 34 years at Crown Cork & Seal Co., where he also became an active member of the International Association of Machinists Local 186, My Maryland Lodge.

In a mark of organized labor's badly broken solidarity, four major unions said yesterday they would boycott the AFL-CIO's Chicago convention, and three appear poised to bolt the federation that has loosely bound the nation's unions together. Officials from the 1.3-million member Teamsters and the 1.8-million member Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO's largest union and the spark behind the rebellion, said they would meet today and announce their plans. Joe Hansen, president of the 1.3-million member United Food and Commercial Workers Union, one of six dissident unions that have formed their own coalition, said he was inclined to pull his union out of the AFL-CIO, but he needed time to talk with UFCW leaders.

As head of Howard County's teachers union for six years, Joseph R. Staub Jr. oversaw three contract negotiations, watched one superintendent retire and another ousted and lobbied successfully for higher salaries. On Thursday, Staub will step down as president of the Howard County Education Association and return to the classroom as a social studies teacher at Long Reach High School in Columbia, where he taught before running for union president in 1999. "I've always considered myself as a teacher, first and foremost," he said.

Thousands of unionized Walt Disney World workers voted down a new three-year labor contract yesterday, giving union negotiators the authority to call a strike. The surprise rejection, by a vote of 3,686 to 2,827, sends negotiators with the Service Trades Council union group and Disney back to the bargaining table today. Union leaders said they are unlikely to call for a work stoppage in the near future. They hope to persuade Disney to improve its offer, saying proposed wage increases are too small and increases in health care coverage are too high.