Business Notes

AUTOS "Lee Got His. We Want Ours"

Not since 1982 have negotiators for the United Auto Workers and Chrysler squared off for comprehensive contract talks. When U.A.W. President Owen Bieber and Tom Miner, Chrysler's vice president of labor relations, shook hands last week to open new negotiations, the circumstances were very different from those surrounding the earlier talks. In 1982 Chrysler was just starting to come back from a brush with bankruptcy, its veins full of bailout money. Today the company is robust, its sales up and Government-backed loans of $1.2 billion paid off.

Mindful of Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca's compensation of $5.5 million last year, U.A.W. negotiators came to the first meeting wearing buttons saying LEE GOT HIS. WE WANT OURS. They called for the carmaker to set up a profit-sharing plan for its 69,000 workers at 46 U.S. sites. Another issue that may complicate efforts to forge a contract before the October 15 deadline is the location of new plants. The union wants a promise from Chrysler that it will build the Liberty, a subcompact designed to compete with General Motors' Saturn, in the U.S. rather than in South Korea or some other country that offers low-cost labor. SHIPPING S.O.S. from Japan's Sanko

To envious outsiders, Japanese business often seems to be an uninterrupted success story. But not last week. Japan's Sanko Steamship, the world's largest tanker operator, filed for protection from its creditors under the country's bankruptcy laws. The company's debts total $2.2 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy case in Japanese history.

The collapse had political as well as economic repercussions. It led to the swift resignation of Toshio Komoto, 74, a Cabinet Minister Without Portfolio in the Japanese government. He helped found Sanko in 1934 and remained its largest individual shareholder even after becoming a leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 1982.

Sanko's troubles began in 1973 when the Arab oil embargo dealt a severe blow to the world shipping industry by reducing the demand for tankers. Instead of taking that as a warning signal, Sanko continued to expand its fleet, despite growing competition from companies based in other Asian countries. By 1983 an oversupply of tankers had swamped the industry, and Sanko slipped into the red. While in bankruptcy proceedings, Sanko will try to stay afloat by scuttling some of its 264-ship fleet. ENERGY Slippery Job for Lloyd's

Venerable Lloyd's of London, the 297-year-old insurance exchange, has often accepted offbeat jobs. Its member underwriters have insured ships against sinking, actresses against breaking their legs, and at least one rock star (David Lee Roth of the Van Halen group) against paternity suits. The latest unusual client: the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC has hired a Lloyd's subsidiary to help find out which countries in the 13-member cartel are exceeding their production quotas and thus depressing oil prices.

Some 1,000 Lloyd's insurance agents worldwide keep track of all ship movements in and out of major ports, and the exchange stores the information with its central computer in Colchester, England. Lloyd's will now alert OPEC headquarters in Vienna to suspicious tanker shipments by any oil producers. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have long contended that many countries in the cartel have cheated on their quotas from time to time. But proof has always been difficult to establish. Now, with the help of Lloyd's, the Saudis and Kuwaitis may be able to confront the offenders with hard evidence that they are out of line. ENTERTAINMENT A Thriller of a Deal

In 1984 some pop music fans believed that Singer Michael Jackson had become bigger than the Beatles. After all, Jackson's Thriller was the best-selling album of all time, his posters were plastered on Burger King drive-thrus, his trademark lone white glove was a hip street item, and not only youngsters but their parents, too, were scurrying to snap up tickets to his Victory concert tour. Last week the indications were that Jackson had overtaken the Beatles in another way: for an estimated $40 million, he reportedly bought control of the copyrights to the Fab Four legacy, 251 Beatles songs written between 1964 and 1970.

In the late 1960s, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the two Beatles who composed the songs, sold the copyrights as a way of gaining tax write-offs. The copyrights were eventually acquired by ATV, a London music publisher, which sold them to Jackson. He will now presumably earn a royalty fee each time such classics as Yesterday and Let It Be are played on the radio. And he could sell TV rights to advertisers as ATV did. It allowed the Ford Motor Co. to use the song Help! in commercials for one year for a reported $100,000. PUBLISHING Heroes Against Hunger

Almost anybody who was ever young knows that Marvel Comics' Spider-Man, the Hulk and Iron Man are some of the world's bravest defenders against evil. Now Marvel's current best-selling superheroes, the X-Men, will do battle against a real catastrophe: drought and starvation in Africa. Spurred on by the spirit of the Live Aid rock concert, New York-based Marvel assembled 52 artists and writers for a special issue to benefit famine victims.

Titled Heroes for Hope, the 48-page comic book will be available on newsstands in September. In the story, the X-Men travel to Africa, where they witness the effects of drought and fight against a creature called the Entity, who "lives off human suffering."

Marvel expects Heroes, with a print run of 800,000 copies priced at $1.50, to generate $500,000 in profits, all going to famine relief. That does not rival the $55 million raised by Live Aid, but the idea is the same: using a marketable commodity to enlist the public in the battle against hunger. As Superheroine Ororo says, "You counter despair with hope. You strive forever for the best you are capable of being! Therein lies the victory!"