DAILY NEWS
For sale in Spokane, no more delay, Democrats’ mistaken identity…
Monday, November 21, 2016
LOCAL
► In the News Tribune — Will Tacoma General nurses go on strike? — Nurses at Tacoma General Hospital could vote in mid-December on whether to authorize a strike. The announcement comes amid talks between nurses and MultiCare Health System management over issues including the “break buddy” system, which allows a nurse to take two 15-minute breaks per shift while another nurse watches over both of their patients… The nurses have worked without a contract since late 2015.
► In today’s Seattle Times — How will mill jobs return to this Trump county in Washington state? — What would it take to reopen a veneer mill that sits idle in Skamania County? That question revealed some unexpected common ground between a vice president of the timber company that owns the veneer plant and a conservation biologist who watchdogs federal timber harvests. They both believe the mill can reopen without gutting environmental rules. And, they both point to a key obstacle: the Forest Service’s shortage of money — made worse by costs to fight wildfires — and shortage of staff to undertake all the environmental reviews and other work needed to boost timber sales from the nearby Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
AEROSPACE
► In the Spokesman-Review — Triumph to sell West Plains airplane parts factory — Triumph Group intends to sell its Spokane aircraft parts factory amid a companywide retrenching. It employs more than 500 people at the factory, including about 400 unionized Machinists. The union contract has successor language included to provide leverage and protect jobs in the case of a new buyer.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Washington’s congressional delegation voted on party lines with Republicans voting to ban the sales and Democrats voting against the ban.
► From PSBJ — Rep. Larsen blasts House vote to shoot down Boeing’s huge Iran deal
THIS WASHINGTON
► In the News Tribune — Tacoma immigration center already at maximum, not likely to change under Trump — For the moment, it doesn’t appear that operations at the privately run immigration detention facility on the Tacoma Tideflats will be greatly altered by President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to dramatically increase deportations.
► In the Seattle Times — Proposed bill attacks First Amendment rights to protest (by Sen. Sharon Nelson) — Sen. Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale), the deputy director of Trump’s campaign in Washington state, has a bill for the coming legislative session that would allow felony prosecution of people expressing their First Amendment rights. It wasn’t that long ago that Ericksen’s bill would have been laughed at, but this sort of nonsense isn’t funny anymore.
TRADE
► In the LA Times — Obama confronts an uncertain future on trade with the likely death of his signature TPP deal — The debate over the TPP, the accord among the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim economic powers, has turned from whether it will be put in place to the question of what the apparent political realignment means for the future of trade… “Stopping TPP is only one small piece of what we need to do together,” said Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO. “This isn’t about being anti-trade or being anti-globalization. It’s about rejecting the model of globalization that our government, both Democratic and Republican administrations, have been putting forward.”
ALSO at The Stand — WFTC: Path forward on trade is pursuing policies that benefit all
► In Yes Magazine — How a battle over affordable medicine helped kill the TPP — A small international group of affordable-medicine advocates undermined TPP’s passage in a years-long drama that pitted consumer advocacy against corporate interests. By relentlessly pointing out how proposals by the USTR would hike drug prices, those advocates helped delay the deal long enough to make it vulnerable to political attack.
THAT WASHINGTON
► In today’s Washington Post — Trump has a plan for government workers. They’re not going to like it. — Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions — these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control in January.
► In the Spokesman-Review — With I-735, Washington voters called for campaign reform, but Republicans in Congress unlikely to take action — Washington voters told their congressional delegation to come up with a constitutional amendment to rein in campaign spending. So what kind of action can voters expect? In the short term, not much. But supporters say they’re building a movement that won’t go away.
► In today’s NY Times — Build he won’t (by Paul Krugman) — We already know enough about Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan to suggest, strongly, that it’s basically fraudulent, that it would enrich a few well-connected people at taxpayers’ expense while doing very little to cure our investment shortfall. Progressives should not associate themselves with this exercise in crony capitalism.
► From TPM — Sanders urges supporters: Ditch identity politics and embrace the working class — “The working class of this country is being decimated — that’s why Donald Trump won,” Sanders said. “And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down… It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.’ That is not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industries.”
NATIONAL
join a labor union pay a fee for representation by the union. The decision by a three judge panel reverses a lower court ruling that overturned the law in Hardin County. The labor unions who sued to block the law say they will ask the full appeals court to reconsider the decision.
► From Huffington Post — Chicago O’Hare Airport workers vote to strike, just in time for Thanksgiving — About 500 airport workers who voted to strike last week will announce on Monday when they plan to take action. The workers, which include airplane cabin cleaners, baggage handlers, janitors and wheelchair attendants, are trying to bring awareness to their fight to earn $15 an hour, improve what they describe as unsafe work conditions and obtain union rights. Currently, the workers are employed by subcontractors hired by the airlines.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.