Legislative news:  ▪  Legislature lets taxpayers pay for workers' health care costs -- A MUST-READ guest column in today's Seattle P-I by Craig Cole, CEO of Brown & Cole Stores.
▪  In today's Olympian -- House Appropriations Committee puts price tag on education: $1.2 billion 
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Sonics unveil proposed arena -- The new owner says a public vote on the proposal is no longer a deal breaker, but that a failure at the polls could mean the team leaves.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Two members of Sonics ownership group opposed gay marriage
▪  In today's NY Times -- Health care for children splits White House, states -- Governors press Bush to provide more money so they can guarantee health insurance for children. In response, administration officials say states should make better use of the money they already have.

EFCA news:  ▪  Employee Free Choice Act: A shield against corporate bullying (MUST-READ op-ed) -- A proposal to let American workers decide in peace and quiet about whether to join a union has provoked a torrent of crocodile tears from corporate executives. Business spokesmen shout that the act deprives workers of their right to an election held by the National Labor Relations Board. But what companies really prize is management's power to exploit the election procedure to mount aggressive, one-sided attacks on workers' freedom of association.
▪  At AFL-CIO Now -- Employee Free Choice Act: No more fear in workers' eyes -- Includes excerpt from Rep. Inslee's testimony before the state House Commerce and Labor Committee last week.
▪  In today's Washington Post -- An assault on corporate speech (George Will column opposing the EFCA)

Local news:
▪  In yesterday's (Aberdeen) Daily World -- Pulp mill running, but fallout remains -- Amid charges that the buyer of Weyco's Cosmopolis mill is a “union buster,” local union leaders are weighing what happened to the lives -- and pensions -- of workers at his Port Alice, B.C., mill in 2004.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Two Seattle City Light workers awarded $1.5 million in discrimination case
▪  In today's Seattle Times -- Hearst may try to prove Seattle Times used JOA to hurt Seattle P-I
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Both Seattle newspapers urge delay in groups JOA document request

National news: 
▪  Today from AP -- AFL-CIO, UAW protest student labor rule -- America's research universities "could not function without the work of teaching and research assistants," says the UAW. "It's absurd for the National Labor Relations Board to deny them the protections of labor law."
▪  In today's Detroit News -- Unions must invest in organizing to stop decline (op-ed) -- Union officers must make a difficult choice: Should the scarce union funds be used to provide services to the current members or allocated to recruiting new members?
▪  In today's LA Times -- Texas talks tough on illegal immigrants -- A growing chorus is pushing some of the harshest immigration-related measures in the country -- laws that would not only deny public services to illegal immigrants, but also strip their American-born children of benefits.
▪  Today at AFL-CIO Now -- Corporations will ship 2.4 million high-tech jobs overseas by 2015
▪  In today's NY Times -- Labor shortage pushing mining companies to recruit and pay more

The Wal-Mart Workers Speaking Tour, featuring workers in the United States, India and Colombia describing the impact the world's largest retailer has on their communities, comes to Seattle tonight and tomorrow. The speakers -- a cut-flower worker from Colombia, a garment union organizer from India, and a grocery store worker from Florida -- have experienced first hand the deplorable working conditions driven by the purchasing practices of Wal-Mart.

TONIGHT -- Tuesday, Feb. 27 -- Seattle University Public Forum
When: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Bannan Room 102
Sponsored by: SU United Students Against Sweatshops

TOMORROW -- Wednesday, Feb. 28 -- Peer-to-Peer Brownbag
When: Noon to 1 p.m.
Where: Seattle Labor Temple, Room 226
Sponsored by: Washington Fair Trade Coalition, UFCW 21, Blue-Green Alliance, Seattle NOW

TOMORROW NIGHT -- Wednesday, Feb. 28 -- University of Washington Public Forum
When: 7 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Smith Hall Room 120
Sponsored by: UW Student Labor Action Project

From Colombia, Beatriz (Betty) Fuentes, is the President of the Sintrasplendor Union at Splendor Flowers, a Dole-owned cut flower plantation which sources to Wal-Mart. Betty and her co-workers have led a courageous fight to improve working conditions for things such as paid overtime, gender equity, and lowering the quotas.

From Banglalore, India, Kotagarahalli Ramaiah Jayaram (nickname Jayaram) is an organizer for the Garment and Textile Workers’ Union (GATWU). As a long-time garment worker, Jayaram has witnessed unacceptable cruelty to workers. He is part of the active campaign to develop an Asia Floor Wage.

From the United States, Cynthia Foley, worked in the stock room for 2 years at a Wal-Mart in the Orlando, FL area. While working at a Wal-Mart retail store, she experienced sexual harassment and when she spoke up, management made excuses for why she shouldn’t work there anymore. Cynthia is an active ACORN member.

Please make plans to attend one or more of these events.

The following guest column by Craig Cole, president and CEO of Brown & Cole Stores in Washington state, appears in today's edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Legislature lets taxpayers pay for workers' health care costs
by Craig Cole, guest columnist

For three years, I've asked the Washington Legislature to reconsider the current mindless health care system that encourages employers to be selfish and irresponsible.  This session they have another chance with bills being considered that would require large employers to reimburse taxpayers for the cost of providing their employees with state-subsidized health care.

Brown & Cole Stores were founded almost a hundred years ago by my grandfather. Last year, we employed around 1,500 workers, very ably represented by United Food and Commercial Workers and Teamsters.  As a 27-store regional supermarket chain based in Bellingham, our stores operated under the trade names of Food Pavilion, Cost Cutter, Food Depot and Save-On-Foods.

I was raised with the American values that good companies take care of their employees.  We worked long and hard with our union partners to provide living wages and benefits to our workers and were proud to do so.  We made health care payments on 95 percent of our work force, while some of our competitors covered less than half.

In November, Brown & Cole Stores filed for bankruptcy protection.  We cited competition from low-paying chains, especially Wal-Mart.  We hope to emerge a survivor, but it's difficult for employers who provide family-wage jobs.  We're living proof of the very real impact that low-way employers have on the local job base that we all hold so precious.

There is no question that Brown & Cole was undermined by large profitable employers who have abandoned basic American values and pay their employees so badly their workers qualify for public assistance.  Using state-funded health care is their profit strategy.  They simply dump their health care costs onto taxpayers.

The largest corporation in the planet's history bases its business model on inferior wages and benefits.  They're keeping the working poor working -- and poor.  Meanwhile, they earn billions by transferring their health care costs onto the rest of us, and they set a very low competitive cost structure that punishes employers trying to conduct business with integrity.

I've brought those concerns to the Legislature for three years now, urging them to make a change.  They didn't.  Since, I've watched Brown & Cole's hard-working employees struggle with a change that has rattled their lives and the lives of their families.  I wish I could tell you of the personal costs, the pain endured.  I won't.  I will tell you that it's the direct result of a competitive playing field that's not level and getting more lopsided as the months pass.  Those irresponsible employers are costing the state a ton of money.

I ask the Legislature: Why are you letting the public pick up the tab?  In essence, every state taxpayer puts money into the pockets of large profitable employers setting a new low for corporate social responsibility.

As a society, we have established a framework for commerce and competition that forbids profiteering by pollution, unsafe working conditions and discrimination.  Why do we allow a public policy framework that rewards a company for misusing its workers?

Do I blame the companies?  Only partially.  I blame a public policy framework that encourages them to behave that way. Consumers benefit from slightly lower prices, yes.  But workers and all citizens lose.

It's a Faustian bargain: We're giving consumers better deals while we're hammering workers, their families, good businesses and our communities.  What kind of deal is that?

The dilemma we face is that there is no real economic incentive to be a good employer, even though company health care coverage keeps people off the state's rolls.  Lawmakers need to be pragmatic.  If more large profitable employers follow down this path, we'd better provide for the escalating costs of funding an ever-expanding state caseload.

Until universal health care with appropriate cost controls is in place, irresponsible employers shouldn't get off the hook.  They'll pay then and they need to pay until then.

The Legislature is considering legislation that will affect only the very largest and stingiest employers who can afford to pay -- but don't.  Without it, those companies will continue to degrade the American worker -- and not just their own.  They're forcing all employers into a race to the bottom.

Craig Cole is president and CEO of Brown & Cole Stores in Washington state

The following guest column by Lance Compa, a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. appears in today's edition of The Washington Post:

A SHIELD AGAINST CORPORATE BULLYING
By Lance Compa, guest columnist

A proposal to let American workers decide in peace and quiet about whether to join a union has provoked a torrent of crocodile tears from corporate executives. The Employee Free Choice Act, which the House is due to vote on this week, would permit an employee to choose union representation by signing a membership card. If a majority of workers in a defined "bargaining unit" opted for it, employers would have to bargain in good faith with the workers' union.

Business spokesmen shout that the act deprives workers of their right to an election held by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But what companies really prize is management's power to exploit the election procedure to mount aggressive, one-sided attacks on workers' freedom of association.

Why the sudden concern for democracy in a culture of otherwise unilateral employer dominion? We don't hear companies calling for secret-ballot votes on management decisions or CEO stock options, or to elect worker representatives to boards of directors. Bosses' democratic impulses appear only when workers want to exercise their right to organize.

Current labor law puts employers in control of what should be employees' concern. Even when by a big majority workers join a union to bargain collectively, employers can force a vote run by the NLRB. During the weeks it takes to set up the election, management can launch a devastating campaign to thwart workers' choice. Employers say they are just telling employees the downsides of organizing. But they go way beyond that point, hauling workers into mandatory meetings and threatening to shutter the workplace or to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike.

Imagine a campaign for president where legally just one candidate can spend an unlimited amount of money for TV advertisements and the other candidate can only pass out flyers at highway intersections. Imagine a campaign for Congress in which every employer in the country can force its employees into a mandatory meeting to tell them: "If you vote for the candidate of Party A, I'll have to close the business; vote for Party B if you want to keep your job." Imagine a campaign for governor where every employer in the state singles out and fires employees who support the candidate whom management opposes.

These examples parallel the reality of union election campaigns under current law. Employers have unlimited access to harangue workers against organizing, while union representatives are relegated to passing out flyers to workers speeding out of parking lots and asking time-stressed employees to attend evening or weekend meetings. Employers have unlimited power to hold captive-audience meetings where they can legally "predict" workplace closure, as long as they don't illegally "threaten" it (a Supreme Court decision created the distinction, though many understandably have trouble differentiating between the two). And though it's illegal, employers routinely fire worker activists to frighten others into submission, knowing it will take years for reinstatement orders to take effect.

A card-based system for choosing union representation is already allowed under current law. Many fair-minded employers use it. But most nullify it, forcing workers into the NLRB election process. These managements say they need an opportunity to offer their version of union "facts," but their presentations are often threat-filled diatribes.

Nothing in the proposed legislation prevents employers from presenting their views -- including their diatribes. Actually, employers are entitled to mount union-avoidance campaigns starting on Day One of a worker's employment. Their campaign is the wages and benefits they pay and the way they treat employees. If workers turn to union representation, it should be their business, not the company's.

Workers should be able to organize without fear-mongering by bosses or, by the same token, pressure from union organizers. This is how the card-based system already works; safeguards against undue pressure from any side are built in. It includes rapid arbitration to resolve any disputes, compared with years of dragged-out NLRB proceedings and federal court appeals.

Many companies have agreed to a card-based system. They find that when workers choose bargaining, a more peaceful, productive negotiating-table dynamic results than in the case of negotiations that follow an NLRB election war. Congress should build such positive labor relations into the architecture of our labor laws by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Lance Compa, a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, wrote the Human Rights Watch report "Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards."