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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Business in brief: Flight attendant strike ban upheld

The Spokesman-Review

A federal appeals court left a strike ban in place for flight attendants at Northwest Airlines on Thursday, clearing up a murky area of labor law in a way that unions won’t like.

The ruling means flight attendants could still strike, eventually, if they first exhaust the lengthy requirements of airline labor law.

But federal mediators have refused to declare the talks at an impasse, a critical step in that process.

The ruling focused on when employees at a bankrupt company can strike.

Northwest won concessions from its other unions as it reorganized under bankruptcy protection over the past year. Two successive flight attendant unions negotiated concessions only to have them rejected by the rank-and-file.

In response, Northwest – with a bankruptcy judge’s permission – imposed pay cuts and work rule changes July 31.

Flight attendants claimed a right to strike because, they said, Northwest’s action amounted to the kind of unilateral change prohibited by the Railway Labor Act, which governs airlines and railroads.

Washington

Court OKs tariffs on Chinese paper

The government of China lost on Thursday in an effort to block the Bush administration from considering penalty tariffs against imports of Chinese paper in a case that is being closely watched by a number of other U.S. industries.

The United States Court of International Trade, a federal court that handles trade matters, ruled that the Commerce Department does have the authority to consider imposing penalties against Chinese companies in disputes involving government subsidies.

Judge Gregory W. Carman, who heard the case for the trade court, rejected China’s request to grant a temporary injunction to stop the U.S. government from proceeding.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez is scheduled to announce today whether the government believes that Chinese paper producers are receiving improper subsidies from the Chinese government.

If the Commerce Department finds that such subsidies exist, it can impose penalty tariffs to protect American paper producers.

Redmond, Wash.

Microsoft unveils mobile phone browser

Microsoft Corp. has unveiled an early version of a new Web browser for mobile devices that it said will make browsing full-sized Web pages faster and easier on small smart-phone screens.

Deepfish, as the software from Microsoft’s Live Labs group is called, takes a Web page intended for a desktop Web browser and turns it into a small image that fits on a mobile phone’s screen. Users can zoom in on the part of the page they want to read or click on.

To date, most Web browsers for mobile phones work best with pared-down versions of existing sites, limiting mobile users’ access to the Internet to a sliver of what’s available to desktop Web surfers.