Tuesday, September 30, 2014

BOEING

► In today’s Seattle Times — Boeing plans 2,000 job cuts in defense work here — In the latest drain of high-paying Boeing jobs out of Washington state, the jet maker’s defense division said Monday it will shift about 2,000 jobs, mostly in engineering, out of the region by 2017. The number of layoffs won’t be known until Boeing finds out how many people relocate, transfer or choose to leave. Employees in Kent and Seattle will be most affected and will get details at an all-hands meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning.

ALSO TODAY at The Stand — Tax-subsidized Boeing Co. snubs state again

► In today’s P.S. Business Journal — Unions vow legislative action after Boeing slashes jobs — “We are concerned and disappointed with the continuing loss of high-wage aerospace jobs in our state,” said Jon Holden, the president of Machinists Union District Lodge 751, in a press statement. “This is not the job growth our legislators had in mind when they approved the nation’s largest tax-incentive plan for the industry last winter, and this is why we are partnering on legislation that would put accountability measures in place.”

STATE GOVERNMENT

► In today’s Olympian — Teamsters win arbitration award giving Corrections’ employees 9.8% raises over two years — In a web statement, Teamsters Local 117 notes the contract is the most generous granted so far to any state government employee group this year. The WFSE and WPEA have agreed to about 4.8% over two years.

ALSO at Teamsters117.org — Interest arbitration award Q&A

► In today’s Columbian — Benton leading trade mission to Cambodia — “We’re trying to generate more business and more imports and exports for Washington state and efforts like this pay off,” said Sen. Don Benton (R-Vancouver).

LOCAL

► In today’s Seattle Times — King County Council sets aside further bus cuts — The Metropolitan King County Council is suddenly canceling plans to make two more rounds of bus-service cuts, after several months of warnings that severe cuts were inevitable. A surge in sales-tax income, along with a closer look at Metro Transit’s own budgets, prompted a council vote Monday to set aside a proposal to eliminate some 250,000 annual service hours, including 16 routes that were to be scrapped in February.

► In today’s Seattle Times — With costs up, mayor wants to roll back Seattle waterfront plan — Murray staffers said cost estimates have gone up, and the plan would eat up about $200 million more than previously thought unless modifications are made.

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Spokane councilman Mike Fagan tries to halt police pact — Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan unsuccessfully attempted to derail an employment contract agreement between the city and the police leadership union Monday night. Despite Fagan’s objections, the five-year deal was approved by a 6-1 vote.

► At PubliCola — Conservative opinion writer out at Seattle Times — Erik Smith, the former workhorse reporter at the conservative state politics blog the Washington State Wire, who took a job at the Seattle Times opinion page just six months ago, has been let go.

NATIONAL

► At Huffington Post — Labor groups alarmed White House may delay home-care minimum wage, overtime rule — It was once part of President Barack Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” economic agenda. But now the wait might be getting even longer. The Labor Department is considering delaying a long-awaited rule that would extend new workplace protections to home care workers — a possibility that has advocates for low-wage workers steamed. In a letter addressed to Labor Secretary Tom Perez on Monday, more than 40 labor and advocacy groups said that they were “alarmed” by suggestions that officials might delay the new regulations and put a “historic workplace victory in jeopardy.”

► In today’s NY Times — Supreme Court blocks order restoring 7 days of voting in Ohio — The Supreme Court has blocked an appeals court ruling that would have restored seven days of early voting in Ohio. Its order was three sentences long and contained no reasoning. But it disclosed an ideological split, with the court’s four more liberal members noting that they would have denied the request for a stay of the lower court’s order extending early voting.

► In today’s NY Times — NYC mayor’s executive order will expand city’s living wage law to thousands more — Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday significantly expanding New York City’s living wage law, covering thousands of previously exempt workers and raising the hourly wage itself, to $13.13 from $11.90, for workers who do not receive benefits.

► At Think Progress — 4th largest oil company latest to ditch ALEC — Occidental Petroleum says that it is leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council amid widespread backlash over the free-market lobbying group’s efforts to undermine clean energy and promote climate change denial.

► At Huffington Post — Prisons are adopting the Walmart business model (by Carl Takei) — Corrections Corporation of America CEO Damon Hininger is hinting at a long-term corporate strategy that could eventually become even more lucrative than CCA’s prison business: The Walmartification of reentry.

► From AP — Walmart: Tracy Morgan partly to blame because he wasn’t wearing seatbelt when our truck hit him — Actor-comedian Tracy Morgan and other people in a limousine struck from behind by a Walmart truck on a highway in June are at least partly to blame for their injuries because they weren’t wearing seatbelts, the company said in a court filing Monday. An attorney representing Morgan and the other plaintiffs called Walmart’s contentions “surprising and appalling.”

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.