Yale workers begin strike

Nearly 4,000 Yale University workers went on strike over wages, pensions and job security early Wednesday, a walkout that coincides with students’ return to the Ivy League campus.

Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said the university planned to keep the campus running with managers and temporary workers performing union workers’ jobs. No new contract talks were scheduled.

“We’re still very far apart on the issues,” said John Proto, president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Local 35.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited the campus and planned to rally with the mostly clerical, service and maintenance workers.

Above, Craig Green, center, who identified himself as a negotiator for Yale University employee unions, spoke Wednesday through a bull horn on a picket line on the Yale campus in New Haven, Conn.

Manufacturing

Bombardier reaches deal to sell recreation division

The founding family of industrial giant Bombardier Inc. teamed up with a U.S. investor Wednesday to buy the company’s recreational products division for $860 million.

Laurent Beaudoin, chairman of Bombardier and son-in-law to the founder and snowmobile inventor, J. Armand Bombardier, said the deal would help Bombardier focus on its core business while the newly-independent recreational products company has a strong future of its own.

The recreational products division of 7,500 employees, which has yet to be named, makes the market leading Ski-Doo snowmobile and Sea-Doo watercraft, along with all-terrain vehicles, Rotax engines and the Johnson and Evinrude outboard motors.

Bombardier also owns a Learjet facility in Wichita.

Executive pay

NYSE chair’s contract draws SEC concerns

The New York Stock Exchange extended chairman and chief executive Dick Grasso’s contract Wednesday in a deal that included $140 million in previously accumulated savings, retirement benefits and other incentives. The payout drew immediate scrutiny from critics as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In an unusual public comment, the SEC said it was “looking into the details” of Grasso’s package. SEC chairman William Donaldson, Grasso’s predecessor at the NYSE, has said the nation’s stock exchanges must lead by example in setting standards for corporate governance.

Grasso, 57, has been with the NYSE for 36 years and has been chairman since 1995. Under the new contract, he will maintain his $1.4 million annual base salary and could continue to collect a yearly bonus of at least $1 million. The NYSE board-approved contract replaces one that was signed in 1999 and was set to expire in 2005.

Wall Street

MGP announces dividend

Atchison-based MGP Ingredients announced Wednesday that it would pay a 15 cent per share dividend to is shareholders.

The maker of fuel grade alcohol and other natural grain based products said the dividend was payable Nov. 6 to shareholders who owned stock on Oct. 10.