Friday, July 22, 2016

LOCAL

► In the Wenatchee World — AFL-CIO leader Trumka stirs state union members here (subscription req’d) — Richard Trumka, the president of the powerful AFL-CIO labor organization, brought union members to their feet here Wednesday, rallying them to continue fighting for policies that will create better wages and lives for working Americans. And, as Republicans struggle with Donald Trump as their presidential candidate, Trumka made clear his support for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

ALSO at The Stand — Trumka to WA unions: “Keep leading the way”

► From KPQ — AFL-CIO head Trumka speaks in Wenatchee

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Nurses’ union nears contract agreement with Sacred Heart — After months of contract negotiations, the union representing nurses at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center said Thursday it has reached a tentative agreement with hospital management. Officials from the hospital and the Washington State Nurses Association have met 17 times since December to craft a new contract for the union’s 1,787 Sacred Heart nurses. The main sticking points, nurses said, were chronically low staffing levels and diminishing benefits packages.

► From The Stranger — Seattle’s hotel workers tell stories of pain, sexual harassment — Seattle’s hotel room service workers are fed up with their employers’ failure to protect and support them. Thanks to a union-backed initiative, hotel workers are one step closer to having adequate healthcare coverage and being protected from sexual harassment.

► From Real Change — Blood, sweat and tears — Janitors who clean commercial buildings in Seattle, especially downtown, are saying they’ve seen reductions in crew sizes and dramatic increases in the amount of work they’re expected to complete in the same amount of time. Over and over, janitors who have worked for decades told the same story. Where they once cleaned one or two floors, they now clean three or four or five. Where the crews had 20 janitors, they now have 10. That forces them to rush, and compromises safety in a job where they are already at high risk for injury.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Seattle police union soundly rejects contract — A defiant Seattle police guild has overwhelmingly rejected a four-year contract with the city, dealing a major setback to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray in his efforts to obtain police-accountability measures.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle discourages hate toward police: ‘We need you’ — Marchers protesting racism and the fatal shootings of blacks by police took to Seattle streets Thursday for a peaceful demonstration in which crowd members pushed the message: Not all officers are bad.

STATE GOVERNMENT

► In today’s Tri-City Herald — State asks judge for immediate protection at Hanford — Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson wants a federal judge to immediately protect Hanford workers from chemical vapors at the nuclear reservation’s tank farms. The state alleges that safety measures at the tank farms have been reduced since it and others sued in September to better protect workers.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Bertha’s woes grind on: more delay, higher cost for Highway 99 tunnel — Tunnel-machine Bertha’s two-year breakdown will cost Washington state an estimated $223 million in cost overruns, and delay the Highway 99 tunnel grand opening even more — now until early 2019, lawmakers were told Thursday.

BOEING

► From Bloomberg — Boeing’s $2 billion hard landing — A long-serving chief executive often hands his or her successor a few nasties to deal with. Such is the fate of Boeing’s Dennis Muilenburg, who last summer replaced Jim McNerney, the boss of the U.S. aircraft maker for a decade. On Thursday Muilenburg disclosed about $2.1 billion in post-tax charges ($3 billion on a pretax basis) related to a trio of struggling aircraft programs: the 787 Dreamliner and 747 jumbo jets, plus a military refueling plane.

ALSO at The Stand — McNerney’s legacy at Boeing: $29 billion in unpaid 787 bills — Diamond Jim was lavishly paid as he led the company down this 787 rabbit hole. In just his final three years before bailing in July 2015, he got $80 million. For his 10 years of service, he also collects a pension worth $4 million per year for the next 15 years.

ELECTION 2016

► In today’s NY Times — His tone dark, Trump takes GOP mantle — Donald John Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night with an unusually vehement appeal to Americans who feel that their country is spiraling out of control and yearn for a leader who will take aggressive, even extreme, actions to protect them.

► In today’s NY Times — Donald Trump’s campaign of fear (editorial) — Given a chance to replace the empty sloganeering and self-aggrandizement of his primary campaign with solid proposals worthy of Americans’ trust, Trump made clear that he instead intends to terrify voters into supporting him, who will protect them from violence, a word that occurs over and over in his remarks.

► In today’s Washington Post — Donald Trump: The candidate of the apocalypse (editorial) — Though he addressed issues ranging from public safety, to immigration, to trade, Trump’s proposed solutions all shared a common premise: the way to overcome difficulty is through force.

► From The Hill — Former KKK leader David Duke lauds ‘great Trump speech’

► From The Hill — Warren: Trump ‘sounded like a two-bit dictator’

► In the News Tribune — Fractures in Washington delegation deepen in wake of Cruz speech — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s convention speech, with an ominous call to “vote your conscience” and a missing endorsement of Trump, sent shock waves through the Washington delegation and chipped away at the already tenuous hope for resolution within the party.

► From TPM — Top aide: Trump appeals to women ‘cuz their husbands can’t pay the bills!

► From Bloomberg — Labor makes Clinton’s case to Rust Belt whites curious about Trump — As Democrats prepare for their national convention to start Monday in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton is counting on one-on-one conversations like these (by canvassers for the AFL-CIO’s Working America) to win over white, working-class Rust Belt voters in November — the voters who are most likely to abandon the Democratic Party for Trump.

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

► From The Intercept — Hours before Hillary Clinton’s VP Decision, likely pick Tim Kaine praises the TPP — Likely vice presidential pick Sen. Tim Kaine defended his vote for fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Thursday. Kaine praised the agreement as an improvement of the status quo, but maintained that he had not yet decided how to vote on final approval of the agreement.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

► From CNBC — Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage is worth less than 50 years ago — Nearly seven years after the federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 an hour from $6.55, it has remained stagnant despite the increasingly heated debate over better pay and worker protections.

► From Think Progress — Congressional Democrats had the perfect response to ‘GOP so white’ selfie — Last Saturday, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) posted an Instagram photo featuring Capitol Hill interns with the caption, “I think this sets a record for the most number of #CapitolHill interns in a single selfie.” That may be true, but people took note of the photo for a different reason — almost everyone in it appears to be white. A few days later, interns working for Congressional Democrats decided to respond.

► In today’s NY Times — Restoring the right to vote in Texas (editorial) — Hundreds of thousands of people stymied by Texas’ absurdly strict voter ID law will finally get a fair break in casting their ballots in November. A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the law discriminates against black and Latino voters and violates the federal Voting Rights Act.

NATIONAL

► From AP — Pickets, but no deal, in Atlantic City casino strike — With a strike against the Trump Taj Mahal casino about to enter its fourth week and no end in sight, Atlantic City’s main casino workers union turned up the heat Thursday, surrounding the massive gambling hall with hundreds of picketers, some traveling hundreds of miles to support the walkout.

► From Huffington Post — Trump’s Vegas hotel settle union-busting allegations — The Trump International Hotel has agreed to pay $11,200 to settle charges that it retaliated against two hotel employees for union organizing.

► From WLRN — Miami airport workers strike for better hours, pay, and safety — A 24-hour strike was declared by a subcontractors’ workers, who are complaining about irregular work hours without overtime pay or benefits, as well as dangerous working conditions.

► In today’s NY Times — Ailes ends reign at Fox after claims of sexual harassment — Roger Ailes stepped down at Fox News, ending a 20-year stint as head of the network, after a sexual harassment suit filed by Gretchen Carlson, a former anchor.

► In today’s Washington Post — WNBA fined players for wearing black shirts. Now they refuse to talk basketball. — The WNBA fined organizations and players on three teams for wearing black warmup shirts to express their concern about recent incidents of violence by and against police officers.

T.G.I.F.

► In lieu of a music video this week, The Entire Staff of The Stand voted to post this clip of Jon Stewart taking over Stephen Colbert’s show last night to unload on Donald Trump’s supporters. “This country isn’t yours. You don’t own it. It never was… You don’t own patriotism. You don’t own Christianity. And you sure as hell don’t own respect for the military, police and fire fighters.” Ah. Music to our ears.

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