NWH-8-3-2013 by Shaw Media

BUSINESS

Page E2 • Saturday, August 3, 2013

8IN BRIEF

Northwest Herald / NWHerald.com

Unions get creative to halt decline

CDW Corp. 2Q net income rises 27 percent VERNON HILLS – Information technology company CDW Corp., which went public in June, said Friday its secondquarter net income rose 27 percent on higher revenue from corporate and public clients rose. Net income rose to $46.7 million for the three months ended June 30 from $36.8 million last year. Revenue rose nearly 8 percent to $2.78 billion from $2.5 billion last year. No earnings per share figures were provided. The company said that was because the initial public offering didn’t close until July. CDW raised about $400 million from its public offering in June, which it plans to use to pay down debt. Based in Vernon Hills, CDW was a public company from 1993 until October 2007 – when it was purchased by Madison Dearborn and Providence Equity for about $7.4 billion. It provides IT services to business, government, education and health care clients.

By SAM HANANEL Associated Press WASHINGTON – With union membership on the decline, labor leaders are getting more creative – and some say more desperate – to boost sagging numbers and rebuild their waning clout. Unions are helping non-union fast food workers around the country hold strikes to protest low wages and poor working conditions. They are trying to organize home day care workers, university graduate students and even newly legalized marijuana dealers. Members of a “shadow union” at Wal-Mart hold regular protests at the giant retailer, which long has been resistant to organizing. Labor leaders say unions must create new models and new ways to represent workers to reverse a steady slide in the union ranks. Those efforts have taken on greater urgency since the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this year that union membership had declined to just 11.3 percent of the workforce – its lowest point in nearly a century. “To be blunt, our basic system of workplace representation is failing to meet the needs of America’s workers by every critical measure,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a recent speech. The most high-profile tactic has seen hundreds of low-wage workers at McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast food chains walk off their jobs this week in a series of one-day strikes to demand better pay and the right to unionize. Workers are demanding wages of $15 an hour, more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. The actions in New York, Chicago, Detroit and other cities are being co-

Chevron’s 2Q profit falls on lower oil prices SAN RAMON, Calif. – Chevron’s latest quarterly profit was huge – $5.37 billion – but down 26 percent from last year due to lower oil prices and maintenance work at some refineries. The results mirrored lower profit at Exxon Mobil and Shell, and they also lagged Wall Street expectations. Chevron Corp. said Friday that it earned $2.77 per share in the second quarter, down from $3.66 per share. Year-ago net income was $7.21 billion. Analysts were expecting earnings of $2.97 per share. Revenue was down 8 percent to $57.37 billion but came in higher than the $56.01 billion that analysts expected. Chairman and CEO John Watson said earnings fell “largely due to softer market conditions for crude oil and refined products.”

AP photo

Demonstrators in support of fast food workers march towards a McDonald’s this week as they demand higher wages and the right to form a union without retaliation. ordinated by local worker centers, nonprofit organizations made up of unions, clergy and other advocacy groups. While not technically labor groups, they receive generous financial support and training staff from the Service Employees International Union and other unions. “Our primary goal is to help workers boost wages,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said. “We think a key part of that is helping workers form organizations where they can directly bargain for wages with their employers.” Labor strategists say the fast food campaign has long-term potential for unions. If unions can’t organize through traditional methods, they see the smaller mobilizations through worker centers as a way to show lowwage workers how coordinated action can win some concessions from

employers. That might make workers in the rapidly growing fast food industry more sympathetic to the idea of joining a union later on. “The fast food and Wal-Mart strikes are exciting examples of workers reinventing the strike, going on offense and challenging inequality,” said Stephen Lerner, a labor and community organizer and architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the tactic has raised the concern of business groups, which say these organizations are merely “union fronts” designed to operate outside labor laws so they don’t have to follow restrictions on secondary picketing, boycotts or file reports with the Labor Department. House Republicans wrote a letter to the Labor Department last week asking officials whether the groups need to abide by labor laws.

“An advantage of these groups is they allow unions to gain entry into a block of workers without them realizing this is just a front for a traditional union,” said Glenn Spencer, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Workforce Freedom Initiative. The number of worker centers has grown from five in the 1990s to more than 200 today, including the Restaurant Opportunity Center, National Day Laborers Organizing Network and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The AFL-CIO and member unions are trying to leverage alliances with those groups, as well as progressive groups that have similar goals. At the AFL-CIO’s upcoming convention in Los Angeles next month, the federation is expected to announce stronger partnerships with the NAACP, Hispanic advocacy groups and the Sierra Club. “The worker centers are obviously springing up to address an unmet need in geographic areas or in particular industries,” said Craig Becker, general counsel at the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO is also seeking to expand its Working America affiliate, which has more than 3 million members sympathetic to unions but who don’t work under collective bargaining agreements and pay only token dues or nothing at all. As businesses have become more aggressive and successful at battling union organizers, unions are also increasingly targeting nontraditional workers for membership. In Minnesota, lawmakers this year authorized unions to try organizing some 12,700 home day care providers whose care of children is subsidized by the state. Similar measures affect home care workers in Vermont and Rhode Island.

U.S. consumer spending up 0.5 percent in June MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON – Consumers increased their spending in June at the fastest pace in four months even though their income growth slowed. Consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in June compared with May, when spending was up 0.2 percent, the Commerce Department reported Friday. It was the best gain since a 0.7 percent rise in

- From wire reports

reflecting in part rising gas prices, while demand for durable goods rose 0.8 percent, reflecting strength in auto sales. The combination of faster spending and slower income growth pushed the savings rate down slightly in June to 4.4 percent of after-tax income. It had been at 4.6 percent of after-tax income in May. The savings rate stood at 5.6 percent for all of 2012, indicating that consumers

February. Income growth slowed to a 0.3 percent rise in June, weaker than May’s 0.4 percent gain. The hope is that strong consumer spending will help boost a lackluster economy to faster growth in the second half of this year. But for that to happen, economists say income growth needs to accelerate. Spending on non-durable goods was up 1.3 percent,

are trimming their savings to finance spending in the face of weak income growth. A gauge of inflation tied to consumer spending showed that prices excluding volatile food and energy rose 1.2 percent over the past year, the lowest gain since a 1.1 percent rise in March 2011. The Federal Reserve has a target of 2 percent for inflation. The fact that inflation is falling below that target has prompted some Fed officials

to be concerned about a potential bout of deflation. That would be harmful to economic growth because consumers could stop spending in the belief that prices will fall more. Consumer spending is closely watched because it drives roughly 70 percent of economic activity. In the April-June quarter, the economy grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate, marking the third straight quarter of lackluster growth.

BRIDGE

Crossword Across

1 Bloke 5 Proper

partner? 9 Expressed 11

out

loud Big name in folk music Cubs cap display Patroness of Québec Defeat in a jump-rope competition, say It’s said to be the world’s fastest field sport More in need of a bath, say Craigslist and others Make sense

Rocker with the 1973 #1 hit “Frankenstein”

Spotted horse

Helpers for the deaf

Loitering

Arrangement of atoms in a crystal structure

Definitely not a good looker?

Wash

Some jazz combos

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE S H E A T H B U M P S O F F

N A S S A U O S O L E M I O

A R C H I E X E R O X I N G

I R A I L S S T A S T D S

L Y L E S S T A N C H

S H E L L C A R A Y A T O R S R Y E Q A N D S T Y X P I N L E P W I X Z A N T E N T L U E D O P S W E B B A P L A I N H O R S E

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B E A R E R

A L Y S S A

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No. 0629

5 10

8 12

19 20

11 14

1 French

Muscle that rotates a part outward

“Standing room only”

Down

Accounting department employees

Join up for another collaboration Middling Georgia and neighbors, once: Abbr.

Edited by Will Shortz

21 22 23 24

40 41

PUZZLE BY JOE KROZEL

Living like husband and wife

Unpaid

Really would rather not

Menu heading

Hurriedly, in scores

Sedimentary rocks resembling cemented fish roe

Throats

Elvis Presley, notably

Post-hurricane scenes, e.g.

Fuel line additive

One side of a famous NBC feud

Look

For answers, call 1-900-285-5656, $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5554. Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS. AT&T users: Text NYTX to 386 to download puzzles, or visit nytimes.com/mobilexword for more information. Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 2,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year). Share tips: nytimes.com/wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/learning/xwords.

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By PHILLIP ALDER Newspaper Enterprise Association

Bob Hope said, “Virus is a Latin word used by doctors to mean ‘your guess is as good as mine.’” Since bridge isn’t always a perfect science, capable of exact calculation, every player has to guess occasionally. But when you have to guess, consider each sensible choice and try to select the one that you think will work most often. South guessed well in this deal from a social game. After West’s one-diamond opening (that hand was far too good for a weak twobid), North’s two-club overcall, and East’s pass, South advanced with a forcing two hearts. (More pairs treat this bid as encouraging but nonforcing; I prefer forcing by an unpassed hand.) When North rebid two no-trump, what should South have done next? Many players would have immediately raised to three no-trump. But that contract would have had no chance -- assuming East led the diamond seven, not a spade. At the table, though, South forced to game with a three-diamond cue-bid. And when North admitted to sec-

ondary heart support with a three-heart bid, South raised to four. True, this contract would have failed if the defense had gone club ace, club ruff, diamond to the ace, club ruff. But no West was ever going to guess that. Instead, he led the spade eight. Declarer won in his hand, drew trumps, and drove out the club ace. West had to cash the diamond ace to stop a second overtrick. Irrelevant to this deal, if you study results, you will see that experts guess better than nonexperts.

Contact Phillip Alder at pdabridge@prodigy.net.