October 12, 1989

LEAD: The issue at the heart of the Boeing Company strike, which has idled 58,000 workers for more than a week, is a new one in the American labor movement - one that is forcing union leaders to confront not only management but also their own members.

LEAD: As the first luxury models from Japan's two biggest automobile makers reach the United States this fall, each car is adding three times as much to the American trade deficit as the far less expensive vehicle it replaces under the current import-quota agreement.

LEAD: The buyout of the UAL Corporation has taken an important step forward with the overwhelming vote by its pilots to commit $200 million from their pension fund, but the machinists' union, which is opposed to the deal, asked the Labor Department yesterday to examine the transaction to determine whether it is fair.

LEAD: Three Brooklyn teen-agers were arrested late Tuesday and charged with assaulting three Jewish students at Brooklyn College in what the police have characterized as an anti-Semitic attack.

LEAD: LAST year the Scottish Opera put on a new production of Johann Strauss's operetta ''Die Fledermaus,'' set in contemporary Glasgow. Instead of taking place in the usual 19th-century drawing room in Vienna, Act I unfolded in a smart Glasgow apartment with cool white walls.