Friday, June 7, 2024
LOCAL
► From KUOW — Puget Sound electrical workers vote on whether to end 2-month strike — About 1,000 electrical workers in the Puget Sound region were voting on Thursday whether to go back to work. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 46 has been on strike for two months in pursuit of better pay and benefits. “Part of it is the holidays, we’ve never had paid holidays,” electrician Patrick Davis of Arlington said on the picket line outside the National Electrical Contractors Association office in Shoreline. “Holidays to us are just kind of an unpaid forced day off. So we’d really like to spend time with our families and not worry about working more for that.”
UPDATE — Due to a technical issue, IBEW Local 46 has scheduled a revote on Monday and Tuesday. Stay tuned.
From The STAND (May 8) — Support IBEW 46 picket lines in electricians’ strike
► From the (Everett) Herald — Everett could vote on a new $20.24 minimum wage — A proposed Everett ballot measure could raise the city’s minimum wage for workers at large businesses to $20.24 — a 24% increase over the $16.28 statewide rate. Seattle’s minimum wage is $19.97 an hour. In unincorporated King County, it’s set to rise to $20.29 next year.
► From PubliCola — Woo says she’ll recuse herself from gig worker wage vote — Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission director Wayne Barnett recommended that Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo recuse herself from an upcoming vote repealing parts of the minimum-wage legislation because of her family’s financial stake in the outcome. Woo asked for a second opinion from the commission, which let Barnett’s recommendation stand.
From The STAND (Mar. 26) — Seattle unions fight to save gig workers’ wage ordinance
► From KOMO — NBA eyes expansion after finalizing media deal; Seattle may see Sonics return — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver signaled on Thursday night that the NBA will turn to expansion as part of a process after reaching a media rights deal. Seattle fans and elected officials have been cautiously watching every word from the commissioner since the Sonics left in 2008.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Never forget the Union Buster who cost us the Sonics.
► From the Spokesman-Review — City of Spokane ranked nationally for dog bites against carriers: ‘There are way too many carriers getting bitten by dogs every year’
AEROSPACE
► From CNBC — Boeing CEO to testify in Senate hearing June 18 — Departing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will testify before a Senate panel on June 18 to answer lawmaker questions about whistleblower allegations and quality control at the aircraft maker as it navigates a safety crisis.
► From NBC News — Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docks with space station after thruster issues — An earlier docking attempt was called off after problems were discovered with five of the 28 thrusters on the lower portion of the Starliner capsule.
THIS WASHINGTON
► From the Tri-City Herald — Washington ranked as the best state economy in the country — In a recent study, personal finance site WalletHub analyzed each state and D.C. across 28 factors to determine which state has the best economy. Each of the 28 factors was given a specific weight and assigned one of three categories: economic activity, economic health and innovation potential. A perfect score would be 100 points — Washington scored a 71.10, taking first place. Utah scored a distant 2nd at 62, followed by Massachusetts (61.52), Texas (60.08), and California (59.63).
EDITOR’S NOTE — Washington also has the third highest union membership rate and ranks among the best states to work. Could it be that what’s good for workers — unions, good wages and benefits, paid sick leave, strong safety nets for unemployed and injured workers, etc. — improves economic activity, innovation and investment, and is therefore good for business? Discuss.
► From the (Everett) Herald — Hey mate, Washington State Ferries wants to give you a full ride — Washington State Ferries is seeking 12 people for full-ride scholarships to the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies in Seattle to become deck officers. The two-year apprenticeship begins in February 2025. Starting pay for a licensed deck officer is $97,000 to $104,000. Each scholarship is worth over $100,000, including a $200 daily stipend for each day of training aboard a ferry.
► From the WA State Standard — Joe Kent is campaigning differently. Will it make a difference? — As he tries to unseat U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the conservative Republican is focusing on issues like inflation, immigration and public safety, instead of 2020 election conspiracies and abortion.
► From the union-busting Columbian — Charges don’t stop Camas Republican John Ley’s House campaign — At this point, nothing prevents a candidate who faces felony election fraud charges from seeking a seat in the same district where his residency was challenged in 2022. John Ley, a Camas Republican, is accused of providing false information on his voter registration, as well as on his declaration of candidacy for an 18th Legislative District seat in the state House.
THAT WASHINGTON
► From the AP — U.S. employers added a robust 272,000 jobs in May in a sign of sustained economic health — America’s employers added a strong 272,000 jobs in May, accelerating from April and a sign that companies are still confident enough in the economy to keep hiring despite persistently high interest rates. Last month’s sizable job gain suggests that the economy is still growing steadily, propelled by consumer spending on travel, entertainment and other areas of the service sector.
► From The Hill — Minority groups’ uninsured rates plummeted under Affordable Care Act — The uninsured rate among Black Americans fell from 20.9 percent in 2010 to 10.8 percent in 2022. Among Latinos, the uninsured rate dropped from 32.7 percent to 18 percent, and from 32.4 percent to 19.9 percent among American Indians and Alaska Natives during that time period.
► From The Hill — Schools fear job cuts as emergency pandemic funding runs out — Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief grants, which will end in September, have been used to assist students with the mental health and test score problems that came with COVID-19, including adding positions from counselors to reading specialists. Now, those jobs may be the first to go as federal funding runs out.
► From the Washington Post — The law-and-order party defunds the IRS. Again. (by Catherine Rampell) — Republicans are trying to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to shirk their tax obligations, while making it harder for honest, working-class taxpayers to file their returns for free. This week, House Republicans released a financial services appropriations bill that would slash the IRS’s fiscal 2025 funding by more than $2 billion, or about 18 percent from current levels. This is part of a much longer-term plan to sabotage the agency so it can’t collect taxes that are legally owed.
► From Bloomberg — Trump tax cut renewal is winning Wall Street, but could cost $4.6 trillion — Trump is wooing Wall Street donors with his tax cut plan, which threatens to add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
From The STAND (Dec. 6, 2017) — Republican/Trump tax giveaway aims to force big cuts elsewhere (by Jeff Johnson) — Social Security, Medicare, veterans, and health care are all on chopping block.
NATIONAL
► From The Guardian — John Deere rolls out hundreds of U.S. layoffs and sends work to Mexico — U.S. workers at John Deere plants have accused the company of acting on “greed” as America’s most famous agricultural equipment company plans to shift more production to Mexico. The company has announced layoffs of several hundred workers over the last several months with more layoffs planned for later this year. John Deere reported a profit of over $10 billion in fiscal year 2023 and its CEO John May received $26.7 million in total compensation. John Deere spent over $7.2 billion on stock buybacks in 2023 and provided shareholders with more than $1.4 billion in dividends.
► From the LA Times — Round 3: UC takes striking academic workers to Orange County court in bid to halt walkout — The fate of an ongoing strike by UC academic workers at a critical time of the year with finals underway could be decided Friday morning in an Orange County courthouse. University of California officials have twice failed before the state Public Employment Relations Board to halt the UAW Local 4811 union strike that kicked off nearly three weeks ago at UC Santa Cruz and has spread to six campuses, including UCLA and UC Irvine.
► From the Milwaukee S-J — Amid construction job boom, hundreds of workers go on strike in southeastern Wisconsin — It’s been more than 20 years since there was a major construction worker strike in southeastern Wisconsin, but for the last six days 18 projects have been on pause.Roughly 500 workers with the IUOE Local 139 are striking over wages.
► From the Hollywood Reporter — IATSE to set new negotiations dates as latest bargaining period ends without deal — The crew union is saying for the second time that it needs more time to reach a West Coast deal with studios and streamers prior to the contract’s July 31 expiration date.
T.G.I.F.
► Today is the final day that the original Entire Staff of The Stand will edit this website. Our last TGIF live music video is dedicated, with love, to the person who supported us for decades as we got up between 4 and 5 a.m. each morning to work on this website (and its predecessor). It’s the person who is most responsible for our happiness in this life: our beautiful wife Dru. We promise to keep finding ways to make you smile.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.
