June 9, 1991

Two of New York City's larger labor unions, representing carpenters and firefighters, have invested in new headquarters. In the process, each has become a landlord seeking commercial tenants in the city's weak real estate market. The firefighters union, formally the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said it paid $3.8 million to buy its new headquarters at 204 East 23d Street, just east of Third Avenue, from the New York City District Council of Carpenters. When minor renovation work is completed on the interior in early July, officials of the firefighters union said they would move their staff of 30 into the top two and a half floors of the five-story, 25,000-square-foot building. Already, they said, the lower floors of the building have been put on the market for commercial tenants, but no leases have been signed. The union is leaving offices it had rented at 225 Broadway, across from City Hall.

For the 80,000 or more slum dwellers of this teeming shantytown near the Indian Ocean, the dismantling of apartheid undertaken by President F. W. de Klerk promises only continuing unemployment, homelessness, malnutrition and despair. These walking casualties of four decades of apartheid are among the seven million of South Africa's 28 million blacks who scrape out an existence in shacks and squatter camps across the country. Their number easily exceeds the white population of five million.

St. Peter's Medical Center in New Brunswick, N.J., believes it delivers more babies a year than any other hospital in the state, and still the newborn numbers keep rising: 5,900 last year, to an expected 6,100 by 1994. So it is not surprising that the center, which is sponsored by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Metuchen, is embarking on an expansion. Ground will be broken next month for a $27 million Pavilion for Women and Children. It will be the hospital's focus for childbirth, prenatal care, pediatric nursing and outpatient care. The center will consist of a five-story triangular project of 75,000 square feet and an adjoining one-story, 11,000-square-foot center for cancer radiation treatment.

PAULETTE GABRIELLINI walked through the sun-flooded rooms of the former Monroe Nursery School building here, her heels echoing on the linoleum. She looked at the bare walls and the empty child-sized shelves, but she saw something entirely different. "Can't you just imagine," she asked, "what it will be like with children laughing, playing and singing?

LIKE a family fighting too long over money, Suffolk County government has sunk into a state of nervous exhaustion that may sap its strength amid a deepening budget crisis. With estimates that a $37 million budget shortfall could grow to $127 million by the end of next year, County Executive Patrick G. Halpin's order to save $4 million by furloughing more than 2,000 county workers for 10 Fridays appears to be stretching the work force's frayed nerves.