Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Monday, July 28, 1997

Bank of Hawaii's parent
ups dividend 2.5 cents

Pacific Century Financial Corp., Hawaii's biggest financial institution and parent company of Bank of Hawaii, has raised its quarterly dividend 8.3 percent, to 32.5 cents a share, from 30 cents.

The last dividend increase, of 2 cents, was in July 1996. The new dividend is payable Sept. 16 to shareholders of record Aug. 22.

AT&T's long-distance
network gets clogged up

NEW YORK -- AT&T Corp. said the amount of calls on its long-distance network today was much higher than usual, and that caused some callers to receive a recorded message saying the company's circuits are busy.

The nation's largest long-distance phone company said Mondays during July and August traditionally have more traffic on the network than other days of the week, Bloomberg News reported. On July 7, AT&T completed a record 280.7 million calls. On the average business day, AT&T completes more than 230 million calls.

"We traditionally see high volume on Mondays in the summer and this Monday is no exception," said a spokeswoman at AT&T.

GM employees head
back to work after strike

MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. -- The 2,800 workers who threatened to shut down General Motor Corp.'s entire North American production, possibly idling tens of thousands of workers, were back on the job today.

Production resumed about 11 p.m. yesterday after 89 percent of the workers approved an agreement to end a strike that began Wednesday at the GM Powertrain Warren Transmission Plant. The plant makes front-drive transmissions, wheels and suspension parts for all GM plants save its Saturn plant in Tennessee.

The walkout in Madison Heights, a Detroit suburb, caused four other plants to shut down -- putting a total of 19,300 GM workers out of work. Tens of thousands of additional GM assembly workers throughout North America could have found themselves laid off within two or three weeks if the strike continued.