Business today

By Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 5, 2000

UNIONS STUDY VERIZON PROPOSAL: Union negotiators were reviewing a proposal from Verizon Communications designed to head off a threatened strike. Unions representing 85,500 telephone workers from Maine to Virginia said they will walk off the job at midnight tonight if contract talks don't produce an agreement on wages, benefits, job security, working conditions and access to non-union workers. Verizon's Florida operations are not involved.

CUBA'S ECONOMY POSTS GROWTH: Cuba's recovery from a financial crisis set off by the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago continued during the first half of 2000 with the economy growing 7.7 percent, the government said. Vice President Carlos Lage credited the nation's moves toward economic independence and diversification for the recovery. Lage was the architect of modest reforms in the early 1990s that allowed Cubans for the first time under the communist government to possess U.S. dollars.

ECKERD NAMES EXECUTIVE: Dennis Cuff, 57, has been named executive vice president of store operations at Eckerd Corp., making him the No. 2 executive at the Largo drugstore chain. Cuff, who replaces Ken Flynn, 55, had been senior vice president of human resources. Eckerd's parent, J.C. Penney Co., continues to search for a permanent chief executive from a group that includes acting CEO John Fesperman.

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