BRIEFCASE ADJUSTERS SUING FOR LOST OVERTIME.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

A Los Angeles judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit by claims adjusters who allege that their employer failed to pay them for overtime.

According to the suit filed against Cambridge Integrated Services Group, which has offices in California, the employees were misclassified as ``exempt'' workers and not paid overtime wages due to them.

Kerri McBride, a representative for Cambridge, was not immediately available for comment.

Schwab reports loss of $41 million

SAN FRANCISCO - Slumping stock broker Charles Schwab Corp. suffered a third-quarter loss of $41 million, reflecting the costs of an expansion gone awry.

The loss of 3 cents per share, reported Friday, represents yet another setback for the San Francisco-based company, which has been in a financial funk for nearly four years. The results for the three months ended in September contrasted with a profit of $127 million, or 9 cents per share, at the same time last year.

Revenue for the period totaled $1 billion compared with $997 million last year. Schwab attributed the poor quarter to a $70 million charge to account for a recent spate of cutbacks as well as $87 million in losses from its capital markets division, which the company is in the process of selling at a discounted price.

Airline permitted to slash union pay

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A bankruptcy judge granted US Airways authority Friday to cut the pay of its union workers immediately by 21 percent through mid-February, saying the airline's situation is so dire that urgent action must be taken.

The 21 percent pay cut is nearly all of the 23 percent reduction the air carrier had sought.

``Basically what we have here is a ticking fiscal time bomb,'' U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Mitchell said in issuing the ruling.

The temporary pay cuts are in place until Feb. 15, 2005, one month short of what the airline had sought. Mitchell also granted the airline authority to reduce the size of its jet fleet.

That wasn't the only bad news for the industry Friday.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation's third-largest carrier, said it was only weeks away from being forced to file for bankruptcy because of widening losses - ranging from labor and pension costs to fuel expenses.

And heavily indebted Northwest has said it needs $950 million a year in concessions from workers.

Southwest chief signs for 3 years

DALLAS - Southwest Airlines Co. co-founder Herb Kelleher will remain chairman of the discount airline for three more years, according to a regulatory filing.

Kelleher and the airline signed a contract during the summer, but it was not revealed until the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Kelleher will continue to receive $450,000 annually in base salary under the employment agreement that began July 15. The board of the Dallas-based low-fare airline earlier this year waived its mandatory retirement age to accommodate Kelleher, 73, who stepped down as CEO in 2001.

PeopleSoft awaits judge's decision

WILMINGTON, Del. - The judge who must decide whether PeopleSoft Inc.'s corporate takeover defenses will stand up against a hostile-takeover attempt by Oracle Corp. said Friday that the latest revision of a key defense was ``a lot closer'' to meeting concerns raised about it in court.

Vice Chancellor Leo Strine of Delaware's Court of Chancery said PeopleSoft was clearly attempting to tailor a special customer-protection program to pass muster in the case when it rewrote the program Monday.

Firm suspending insurance pacts

NEW YORK - Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. said Friday that it was suspending its practice of using ``market services agreements'' with insurance carriers, which the New York attorney general has alleged were used to rig bids, cheating customers.

The agreements - also known as contingent commissions or placement service agreements - are at the center of a lawsuit announced Thursday by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accusing the New York-based firm of taking payoffs from insurance companies to steer corporate clients their way, rather than get those customers the best prices for corporate property and casualty policies.

The fees are over and above ordinary commissions that brokers receive from insurance companies, mainly for steering volume business the insurer's way.

B of A damages may be increased

SAN FRANCISCO - A California judge wants to nearly quadruple the damages Bank of America must pay to an estimated 1.3 million customers whose Social Security accounts a jury found were illegally raided.

After a six-week trial, a jury in February awarded $75 million in damages to the B of A customers, in addition to $1,000 in special damages to each one who proves that the bank's actions caused substantial emotional or economic harm. In all, the bank could be on the hook for more than $1.5 billion.

On Thursday, the state judge who presided over the trial, Anne Bouliane, tentatively increased the $75 million in general damages to $284 million - the amount of money she determined that the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank siphoned from the customers' direct-deposited Social Security accounts.