WSLC Reports Today
Updated DAILY... Almost Every Day™ 

Links are functional at date of posting, but sometimes expire. Some links require free registration.  WSLC Reports Today links to stories of interest to organized labor; some positive, some negative.  The intention is to inform.

THURSDAY,  APRIL 3

"I've changed my style somewhat, as you know. I'm less, I pontificate less,
although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting
with people."

George W. Bush
February 13, 2000
From NBC's Meet The Press.

Tanker News:

• Boeing protest over tanker moves forward  -- Seattle Times -- The Government Accountability Office (GAO) rejected motions by Northrop and the Air Force to toss out parts of Boeing's complaint, spokesmen for the military service and the companies said Wednesday. The GAO declined to comment. "The GAO denied the Air Force's request to dismiss some of Boeing's protest as untimely," Maj. Linda Pepin, a spokeswoman for the service, said in a statement. "As a result, the Air Force better understands the protest issues. The Air Force is satisfied with this result."

• Boeing right to question tanker award to Airbus -- Seattle Times Opinion -- With a Boeing tanker award, the American people would have ended up with a higher-quality, lower-cost product for the U.S. taxpayers and less military spending on infrastructure; plus, we would be keeping primarily American workers working during good times and bad. With the Airbus win, we are costing the U.S. taxpayers more, putting billions in new investment capital in Europe and keeping primarily European workers working in good times and bad.

• When Public Advocates Line Up for Corporations -- Washington Post -- Officials at Citizens Against Government Waste, a quarter-century-old group founded as a good-government advocate, wanted other groups to join in speaking out in favor of the "open, fair and transparent" process that gave the award to Northrop Grumman and its partner, European Aeronautic Defence and Space. But as often happens in this town, the story was not so clear cut. It turns out Citizens Against Government Waste, or CAGW, was playing a more complicated advocacy role on the same side as the Northrop team, in an immense struggle over the deal with surprise loser Boeing.

Local News:

• Seattle officials propose 20-cent grocery-bag fee -- Seattle Times -- Forget the canvas sacks at home? Shoppers at grocery, convenience and drug stores will pay the price starting Jan. 1, if the City Council approves. A family buying six bags of groceries a week would spend $62.40 a year in bag fees. The city will issue one free reusable shopping bag to each household.
• Women's forum fighting human trafficking with focus on human rights -- Seattle Times -- In a presentation Monday evening at the Yesler Community Center, Tomas Rebugio said 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Some estimate 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States annually, 80 percent of them women and girls. Trafficking is recruiting, harboring, transporting or using a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud or coercion. Beyond sex, victims are trafficked for domestic servitude, agriculture, sweatshops, hotel work and arranged marriages.
• State antes up to train students for jobs in trades -- Seattle Times -- Gov. Christine Gregoire last week signed legislation calling for the first overhaul in 20 years of the state's Career and Technical Education (CTE) program. The bill retools high-school training programs to ensure students can move easily to industry apprenticeships and programs at technical and community colleges. It includes $100 million to modernize and expand the state's network of skill centers, the regional campuses where high-school students explore jobs such as aerospace manufacturing and computer networking. About $9 million will go toward a new health-careers facility that will serve seven Eastside school districts in partnership with Lake Washington Technical College.
• Construction interest built from ground up -- Columbian --  Nutter Corporation and the Portland-based Northwest College of Construction ginned up an uncertain experiment: They would invite students for the week, morning until early afternoon, in hopes of wooing prospective workers. “The Department of Labor has been telling us for five years that there’s going to be a shortage of construction workers,” Nutter Corporation spokeswoman Lisa Schmidt said. The students observed the county’s improvement project on St. Johns Road to extend the two-lane road to four lanes and two bike lanes. Wednesday’s lesson focused on heavy equipment and pipe-laying.
• Unions rocking the boat over free ferry pass -- Seattle Times -- Union retirees and their spouses can ride the ferries for free for life. Since 2004, 219 passes have been issued to retirees and 142 to spouses, according to the state. During much of his 34-year tenure with the ferry service, Anderson belonged to The Inlandboatmen's Union (IBU) but lost union status when he left his job as a terminal supervisor to become a manager. Union officials with the Ferry Agents, Supervisors and Special Project Administrators Association (FASPAA), which represents terminal supervisors, say Anderson is entitled to the ferry pass.
• Northshore administrators enjoy perks  -- Seattle Times -- The deal allows top managers and supervisors $1,800 over three years to purchase personal technology for home use and be reimbursed with district money. The purchases do not have to be job-related. "To buy things for purely personal use out of taxpayer money, that's what outraged us," said Donna Lurie, who represents the Northshore Education Office Professionals Association, which represents support staff in the district.
• Trans-Ocean’s Ore. closure will boost local employment -- Bellingham Herald --Trans-Ocean Products Inc. is closing its Salem plant in June, laying off 57 employees. However, the company is adding a new production line at its Bellingham facility and adding 30 employees, said Rick Dutton, president of the company. He said they’ve been able to make the 55,000-square-foot Bellingham facility more efficient through capital improvements and other changes, reaching the point where they could handle all of the production in one place.
• HANFORD: Progress made at final meeting on new cleanup deadlines  -- Tri-Cities Herald -- Officials at the meeting will be taking ideas back to their leadership, according to a brief statement released today by the negotiating agencies. “If consensus is reached, the agencies will seek public input before the agreement is finalized,” the statement said.
• State still ranks 5th in wind-power use -- Seattle Times -- The state ended last year with 1,163 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity, up from 818 megawatts in 2006. Texas led the nation with 4,446 megawatts of installed capacity, followed by California, Minnesota and Iowa, the association's report said. Washington derives about 2 percent of its electricity from wind power.
• Economic turbulence: Delta scales back Yakima service -- Yakima Herald -- Citing rising fuel costs and a sagging national economy, Delta Air Lines will be suspending an afternoon flight from Yakima Air Terminal as part of a move to cut costs nationwide, the airline said Wednesday.

Political and Legislative:

AFL-CIO Congressional Records Available click here for more

• Rove disputes claims about Ala. governor --AP --  Karl Rove is calling CBS a "shoddy operation" for airing a story suggesting that he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic Alabama governor. CBS has stood behind the "60 Minutes" program from February in which Simpson said Rove asked her to find evidence that Siegelman was cheating on his wife. Siegelman was convicted on corruption charges in 2006.
• Burner, Gregoire gaining strength -- Northwest Progressive  --  Congressional Quarterly has just released a new brief outlining the changing dynamics of two top races in Washington State (the 2008 gubernatorial and 8th District contests). The title of the brief speaks for itself: "Democrats Gaining Strength in Washington State". Here's a summary:

  Gov. Christine Gregoire and 8th District candidate Darcy Burner came within a razor‑thin edge of their opponents in their last contests. But analysts now say that the Democrats have upped their chancing of winning as the state GOP party faces structural problems and GOP efforts to appeal to the state’s large number of moderate voters has been hampered by their strong conservative base.
  

McCain Myth Busters: 

• The AFL-CIO has put up a new website - McCain Revealed, a campaign to tell the real story about Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican nominee for president. McCain has built a media-friendly reputation as a “maverick” and moderate. But there’s nothing moderate about McCain, a loyal ally of Bush who has consistently and perniciously voted against the interests of working families in his decades-long career in Washington.

   

  The AFL-CIO's new McCain Revealed website features an interactive McCain briefing book that answers the questions we need to know before we go to the polls, including where he stands on the economy, jobs, health care, trade, workers’ rights, retirement security and the Bush administration. click here for more or just go directly to the site.

• McCain forecloses early -- Seattle PI Opinion -- The theme for his mortgage speech last week was basically McCain to Homeowners: Drop Dead. It was, he said sternly, "not the duty of the government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly." The good news, he noted, was that out of 80 million American homeowners, only 4 million are in the tank, while everybody else is "working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets" the way Countrywide Financial intended them to.

• McCain Skips Out on Worker Roundtable -- AFL-CIO -- Yesterday, workers in Annapolis, Md., were hoping to get a chance to talk to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) about jobs, the housing crisis and the economy. They got to have their conversation—but McCain stayed away. What he missed was an opportunity to hear firsthand how the economic crisis is affecting real people. Beverly Norton, an AFSCME member and 20-year state employee, described her situation, one that’s all too common today. She’s at risk of losing her home because her economic situation has left her without a safety net.

National News:

• Unions pounce on patent reform -- AP -- Spurred by concern about overseas piracy of U.S. goods, unions have stepped up their opposition to patent reform legislation pending in the Senate. The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition, a group of seven unions that includes the Teamsters, argued in separate letters recently that proposed reforms to the patent system would make it easier for competitors in China and India to counterfeit U.S. products and send more U.S jobs overseas.
• U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Rose 38,000 to 407,000 -- Bloomberg -- The biggest housing recession in a generation, coupled with mounting losses in financial markets, is prompting companies to sack workers and consumers to slow their spending. The Labor Department may report tomorrow the U.S. lost jobs in March for a third month, according to economists surveyed.
• United Cancels 31 Flights for Inspections  --NY Times -- The inspections, of part of the fire suppression system in the cargo hold, were ordered by the airline after United workers found that scheduled checks of the equipment had not been performed, said Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for United. She said 52 aircraft were taken out of service beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening. Inspecting all of the aircraft is expected to take 24 to 36 hours, she said. By Wednesday morning, 14 inspections had been completed. She said none of the inspections conducted by noon on Wednesday had turned up any problems with the fire suppression systems.
• FAA inspectors: Southwest tried to hide safety problems -- CNN -- Southwest Airlines tried to keep serious problems with its maintenance program hidden and pressured the Federal Aviation Administration to keep out an inspector who noticed the problems, according to two FAA inspectors who blew the whistle on the airline.
• Pilots Not Ready To Say Aloha -- Forbes -- On Tuesday the Airline Pilots Association announced it will fight for Aloha's pilots defending their contract rights and representing them in bankruptcy court. The Union announcement trailed Aloha's white-flag announcement on Sunday that it intended to halt all passenger service after Monday, shuttering a business that's been running since 1946.
• Bankrupt, ATA Cancels All Flights -- NY Times -- The Indianapolis-based airline operated 29 aircraft, carrying about 10,000 passengers daily on four routes from Chicago’s Midway Airport and several West Coast routes to Hawaii. ATA’s Web site said the company had 2,230 employees and most of them were being notified that their jobs have been eliminated. The Associated Press reported that notices were posted Thursday morning at ticket counters in cities ATA served, telling passengers that the airline had shut down.
• Ex-Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling petitions court  --AP -- Jeff Skilling has appealed to have his conviction overturned. Skilling is the highest-ranking executive to be punished for the accounting tricks and shady business deals that led to the loss of thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in Enron stock value and more than $2 billion in employee pension plans after the company imploded in 2001. He was convicted in May 2006 on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors for his role in the collapse of Houston-based Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company.
• Sawdust: Once a nuisance, now valuable -- AP -- The high price is perhaps the one silver lining that sawmills are experiencing in a down market. Hundreds of sawmills have cut back production or shut down as lumber demand and prices have tanked. In February, sawmills on average were getting $243 per thousand board feet of construction lumber, Spelter said, citing industry reports. That's down 15 percent in the past year and 35 percent from two years ago. But at least the mills can earn back a little something from the higher prices for sawdust and other wood byproducts.
• TV and radio actors union to start negotiations with producers -- AP -- The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists says it will start contract talks with Hollywood producers on April 28. The talks involving the Screen Actors Guild are scheduled to begin on April 15.The two unions had for decades negotiated together with producers, even while sniping at each other over who better represents some 44,000 actors who are members of both groups. Last weekend, the union representing TV and radio artists decided to sever that negotiating arrangement.
• In High Prices, Moribund Mines Find a Silver Bullet -- NY Times -- It was not such a foolish question a few years ago, when silver was slumming at less than $5 an ounce. Back then, local mines were closed or running skeleton crews or immersed in seemingly endless environmental cleanups. Since the 1980s, an entire generation of Silver Valley workers had left to find jobs elsewhere. Shoshone County, previously one of Idaho’s three most prosperous counties, had become one of its three poorest.Now silver is around $17 an ounce, there is talk of reopening a local mining training site (it is a mine-it-yourself tourist attraction now), and an industry that declares itself cleaner and safer than ever is reaching out across the West to find workers.

Health Care:

• Food for Your Children or Medicine You Need. What Would You Choose? --  AFL-CIO Blog -- The AFL-CIO 2008 Health Care for America survey is now available. More than 26,000 women and men, insured and uninsured, young and old, union and nonunion took the comprehensive survey, while nearly 7,500 took the time to write about their personal health care experiences. The overwhelming majority, 95 percent, say the health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.

World News:

• China jails rights activist outspoken on Tibet -- AP -- A Buddhist Chinese dissident outspoken on Tibet and other sensitive topics was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Thursday, a conviction likely to become a focus of international rights campaigns ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Do you want to know how Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted on a move to repeal the federal minimum wage?

Are you interested in Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) vote on a measure to rein in the soaring cost of prescription drugs for seniors and working families?

How about finding out where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) stood on a bill that would restore the freedom of airport screeners to join a union?

Or maybe you just want to know if your U.S. House member voted with working families last year?

All that information and more about your U.S. senators and representatives is just a click or two away in the AFL-CIO's final 2007 House and Senate Voting Records. The congressional scorecards track 19 Senate votes and 24 House votes from the first session of the 110th Congress.

Workers Memorial Materials Available Online Now -- AFL-CIO Blog -- 

Each year, thousands of workers are killed on the job and millions more are injured or become ill because of their jobs.

This April 28, workers in the United States and around the world will honor those killed and injured on the job and call for improved workplace safety on Workers Memorial Day.

You can start planning and organizing a Workers Memorial Day event in your workplace or community with materials now available online from the AFL-CIO.