MONDAY, MAY 14 

Local news:
▪  In today's Seattle Times -- Keeping the lights on -- Seattle City Light has 50 vacancies among its line-worker positions in spite of offering base wages that go above $80,000 a year for experienced journeymen. (In the push toward college-preparatory academics) we forget craft work. We forget that it requires the ability to calculate the angle of a wall, or how much concrete is needed in footings, or how to switch on the electricity for a neighborhood. By forgetting this work, we devalue it. And yet the market is not devaluing it. Just the opposite.
▪  At ShiftBreak.com -- Airport screeners fight for union rights -- In a recent SeaTac demonstration, security screeners demand changes in federal law that prohibits them from forming unions.
▪  In today's Yakima H-R -- Apple industry savors sweet fruit of success -- With big crops, strong demand and record prices -- at $18 a box, they are double that of 2001 prices -- the apple industry has boosted jobs and helped lower Yakima Valley unemployment to record lows. 
▪  In today's Everett Herald -- Speeding the Dreamliner toward certification -- No matter how cool, fuel-efficient or revolutionary Boeing says the 787 is, it still has to prove the jet can fly safely.
▪  In today's Olympian -- Effort launched to raise wages in South Sound for child care workers
▪  In today's Kitsap Sun -- Email trail shows lawmakers stacked up against NASCAR track
▪  In the PS Business Journal -- Business groups decry new health care "mandates" 

Trade news: 
▪  At AFL-CIO Now -- Despite congressional deal, "our trade policy will not be fixed overnight" -- Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney: "The Bush administration’s consistent unwillingness to enforce trade violations against nations like Jordan and China reminds us there is no guarantee the executive branch will enforce any new rights workers may gain through these negotiations."
▪  In today's LA Times -- Pelosi must sell her own party on new trade policy -- Unhappy Democratic lawmakers -- joined by key labor unions and environmentalists -- complain that the deal Pelosi approved does not go far enough and compromises too much with the White House.

National news: 
▪  In the Seattle P-I -- McDermott pushes "wage insurance" for displaced workers -- But the AFL-CIO says wage insurance is little more than a guarantee that workers will get stuck in low paying, dead end jobs with few prospects for earning what they made in earlier jobs.
▪  In today's San Jose Mercury News -- No agreement in sight yet on immigration -- The Senate launches a major debate on immigration this week, with shaky prospects for a comprehensive overhaul that large numbers of Democrats and Republicans can support.
▪  At AFL-CIO Now -- UAW says Chrysler deal in best interests of workers 
▪  In today's Chicago Sun-Times -- Bill backs workers and union, supports democracy (op-ed) -- Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act wield words and phrases such as "democracy," "free choice" and "fairness." They warn the American people that the legislation will dangerously tip the balance of power to that bogey of the right, "big labor," while robbing workers of their cherished democratic right to a secret ballot by forcing them to accept a card check system. Such arguments are nonsense. For most of America's history, working people were denied their democratic rights not by unions but by employers and federal and state governments that used court injunctions and violence to suppress workers' attempts to organize.