The new unionism?
▪  In today's Seattle Times -- SEIU 775, nursing home alliance team up -- Local 775 promises to help push for more state money. If they succeed, the companies bless the union's organizing efforts. As part of the 10-year agreement, Local 775 promises no strikes and agrees to let the nursing-home operators -- not the union or workers -- decide which homes are offered up for organizing. The agreement includes a template of a "model" contract that spells out ahead of time many of the things normally left to the collective-bargaining process. The union also agrees not to try organizing more than half of a particular company's nonunion homes.
▪  In yesterday's Seattle Times -- Mental-health aid could be hurt by SEIU 1199NW, provider fight -- The union offers to join 17 mental-health clinics and hospitals in lobbying the King County Council for the tax increase, on the condition that the agencies open their doors to a union organizing drive. Says Councilman Bob Ferguson: "SEIU representatives have made it clear that they would oppose the sales-tax increase unless an agreement is worked out."

Legislative news:
▪  In the Olympian -- Workers' health care bill advances to the full House -- Once known as the health-care “connector” bill, SHB 1569 creates a new Washington Health Insurance Partnership.
▪  In today's Seattle Times -- Saving for a rainy day (while the roof is leaking) (op-ed) -- A rainy-day fund will be of full benefit only if paired with a responsible near-term effort to cure our state tax system's structural inadequacies. Otherwise, it could well drive lawmakers to ignore pressing present-day shortfalls while setting aside scarce resources for future crises that might never arise and creating false public perceptions that the state is taking in more revenue than it needs.
▪  Today from AP -- Health care, education issues still alive midway (roundup of bills still in play)
▪  In today's Olympian -- State-worker data security issue before Legislature -- Several bills that could affect state employees would focus on ways to make personal information more secure.
▪  In today's PS Business Journal -- Sonics arena needed for tourism (editorial) -- Even if the region and the Legislature let the Sonics go now, it may well find itself debating a similar convention-expansion initiative only a couple of years down the road.
▪  In today's News Tribune -- State senators take the wrong bill hostage (editorial) -- Nixing school-levy supermajorities should have sailed through a long time ago. That’s exactly its problem. It fits the profile of what lawmakers target when they want to do some horsetrading -- or merely pitch a fit.
▪  In today's Seattle Times -- More hijinks in Olympia (editorial) -- Sen. Ken Jacobsen, usually a strong voice for public education, took a truly dumb vote when he refused to support a constitutional amendment to lower the threshold for passing school levies (to make a point on another bill).

Local news:
▪  In yesterday's News Tribune -- Who tests our truck drivers? -- Citing fraud and concerns about public safety, Washington state licensing officials want to dump many of the private companies and individuals who test commercial drivers who drive big rigs, buses and other vehicles.
▪  In today's Tri-City Herald -- DOE departures leave Tri-Cities in a lurch (editorial) -- The heads of all three of the DOE's offices here have retired in the span of less than a few months.
▪  In today's Spokesman-Review -- Empire Health Services exec paid $690,000 -- Its board defends pay that exceeds top hospital executives overseeing much larger, more profitable hospitals.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Alaska Airlines (Menzies) baggage handler injured at SeaTac 
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Seattle waterfront vision overlooks impact on workers (Connelly column) -- The "surface street option" doesn't work for thousands of people with family-wage waterfront jobs, nor for those whose livelihood depends on getting goods to market, and supplies down to the docks.

EFCA news:
▪  Sunday from AP -- Obama says Senate will pass Employee Free Choice Act -- The Democratic presidential candidate says the Senate will pass it, but getting it past Bush is another matter.
▪  In Sunday's LA Times -- Why so threatened by a union card? (op-ed) -- The real problem in the U.S. economy is not that workers have too much bargaining power. It's that they have too little.

National news:
▪  In today's NY Times -- Without health benefits, a good life turns fragile -- It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000. But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
▪  In today's LA Times -- Trade-tied jobless aid gets push -- Lawmakers who want to add service workers to the program may link that to renewal of Bush's "fast track" negotiating authority.
▪  From Bloomberg -- 7,000 to lose jobs at Boeing in C-17 program -- The company will start cutting about 7,000 jobs for a scheduled production-line shutdown in “mid-2009” at its Long Beach plant.
▪  From AP -- Obama, Clinton pressure Wal-Mart on security -- Retailer is urged to drop opposition to scanning all U.S.-bound cargo containers for possible terrorist nuclear bombs. Learn more.