Hotel Workers Rising news:
▪  In the PSBJ -- As Seattle adds hotel beds, union hopes to enroll the people making them -- As a UNITE HERE member, Maria Conde makes $11.80 per hour, 32% higher than the average wage hotel housekeepers make in Washington. She and her family have access to medical benefits that many nonunion hotel workers do not. If she cleans more than 15 rooms per day, she is paid overtime. As a union member, she doesn't have to worry about being fired without her manager showing cause... And with nearly 2,400 new hotel rooms coming online in downtown Seattle through 2009, the city is considered a key city in the union's "Hotel Workers Rising" campaign. 
▪  At UNITEHERE8.org -- Tentative agreement at Seattle Westin Hotel! -- Ratification vote this week.

Legislative news:
▪  In today's News Tribune -- Tough talk on payday lending; interest rate caps appear doomed -- Rep. Steve Kirby (D-Tacoma) plans to kill the legislation critics want that would limit the loans to an annual percentage rate of 36%. He’s drafting a less restrictive alternative. “Those bills are a ban on payday lending in the state of Washington, that’s what they are,” says Kirby, chairman of the House Insurance, Financial Services and Consumer Protection Committee.
▪  In The Stranger -- Senator MoneyTree -- One Hispanic community leader recently asked Sen. Prentice (D-Renton) if she worked for MoneyTree, a local payday lender. The baiting question may have been risky considering Prentice's reputation for keeping tabs, but it was also a sign of the increasing willingness of those on the left to lash out at her for her pro-business stance.
▪  In today's Olympian -- Several bills tackle less-contentious public employee retirement issues 
▪  In the P.S. Business Journal -- Lawmakers must ease B&O tax burden on small businesses (editorial) -- HB 1171 would exempt more small businesses from the tax by raising the financial thresholds on which it applies, and it has a lot of momentum with 31 bipartisan co-sponsors.
▪  In the PSBJ -- Commission report offers hope for uninsured -- Because the Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care opted to approve only recommendations agreed to by consensus, members said there was a lot of give and take and a lot of fuzzy language in the report.
▪  In Sunday's Seattle Times -- Lawmakers seek more ferry funding -- Since I-695 passed, fares have swelled by 62% in the last five years, and ridership dropped by 10% between 1999 and 2005.
▪  In the Spokesman-Review -- Keep power plays within Statehouse (Roesler column) -- It's OK for a public official to go to bat for a friend in a private dispute. But it stops being OK when the public official starts noting that he's a state senator, threatening to sic TV crews on someone and threatening to change the laws to "make you an example," as Sen. Dave Schmidt reportedly did.

Local news:
▪  In the PSBJ -- Wages lift project costs -- Hourly construction wages are creeping up, driven by a short supply of workers and overall higher costs of living. In Eastern Washington, construction workers in several trades won wage increases of $1 to $1.30 an hour in recent contract talks, a big jump after a period of only slight gains, the state DOT said. Those contracts could set a precedent for wage deals on the western side of the state, where contracts expire in May.
▪  In today's News Tribune -- Troopers' raises would set precedent -- State Patrol unions negotiated a two-year contract with the governor’s office that would, for the first time, give “geographic pay” to commissioned officers if they are assigned to work in the Puget Sound mainland.
▪  In the Daily News -- Longview Fibre still quiet amid buyout talk -- Six months after, pressured by a hostile takeover bid, it announced it would consider selling the company, shareholders and insiders say management may be exploring the possibility of taking the company private.
▪  In the (Aberdeen) Daily World -- Jim Coates: A life about everyone else -- A profile of the former Woodworkers/IAM business agent who runs the Grays Harbor and Pacific County Food Bank.
▪  In today's Seattle Times -- Library chief in line for raise as union forms -- Employee discontent over $152,914-a-year King County library chief Bill Ptacek's management style and restructuring has spread to supervisors, who have formed a union. Now, Ptacek is getting an "unspecified raise."
▪  In Sunday's Seattle Times -- State GOP ousts chief; former state Sen. Luke Esser takes reins 
▪  In The Oregonian -- Freightliner to lay off 800 in Portland -- Freightliner plans to lay off 800 of its 1,700 union workers in Portland effective March 30 as it ratchets down production from 74 trucks per day to 28. The work reduction affects Machinists, painters, Teamsters and janitors.

National news:
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Global economy: Uneasy statistics (editorial) -- While economists maintain that globalization has been a boon for the world's economy, they're also coming to realize that overall, rapid-fire international trade tends to make the rich richer and the poor worse off.
▪  In The National -- U.S-South Korea trade agreement headed for trouble -- The emotions aroused by the KORUS in a country that was once one of America's staunchest allies have brought South Korea's political fault lines into stark relief. A near total lack of transparency and public participation in the negotiating process, a squelching of public dissent and a government- sponsored propaganda campaign are putting Korean democracy to the test.
▪  Today from AP -- Malaysian, U.S. unions oppose trade deal -- Labor unions in Malaysia and the United States said Monday they opposed a free trade agreement between their two countries unless it incorporated mechanism to protect labor and social rights.
▪  In Sunday's Bellingham Herald -- Health care system needs attention now (editorial) -- We applaud the fact that President Bush has forwarded a plan. But we remain guarded about the approach.
▪  In the NY Times -- Labor union, redefined, for freelance workers -- Tens of thousands of freelancers -- Web designers, video editors, writers, dancers and graphic artists -- have been organized into a thriving organization, the Freelancers Union, offering members lower-cost health coverage and other benefits that many freelancers often have a hard time getting.