Business in brief: Nurses suing Sacred Heart
Registered nurses at Sacred Heart Medical Center have sued the hospital, claiming they should be paid overtime wages for missed rest breaks after they have already logged a 40-hour work week.
The complaint was filed Dec. 21 in Spokane County Superior Court by the Washington State Nurses Association, the labor union representing RNs at Sacred Heart.
The suit states that cash damages have not yet been calculated, but the WSNA has asked for damages in amounts equal to double the amount of wages due plus interest and attorneys’ fees and costs.
Officials at the hospital declined to discuss the suit.
SALEM
Storm left glut of timber
The destruction unleashed on coastal forests during the Dec. 2 storm has left public and private forest owners with a glut of logs in an already dismal timber market.
“This is going to put an awful lot more volume out there,” said Tom Savage, district forester for Oregon Department of Forestry’s Astoria district.
The price for softwood framing lumber has plummeted to about $260 per thousand board feet from the most recent high of about $460 in May 2004, according to Random Lengths forest products information service.
Log prices have fallen accordingly, which has left forestland owners questioning the economic sense of salvage efforts, said Michael Bunch, president of the Clatsop chapter of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association.
NEW YORK
Berkshire buying into Marmon
When tycoon Warren Buffett’s investment company said on Christmas Day it would pay $4.5 billion for a 60 percent stake in industrial conglomerate Marmon Holdings Inc., he gave the U.S. industrial segment a much-needed vote of confidence.
Marmon has more than 125 manufacturing and service businesses and is owned by trusts of the Pritzker family of Chicago, which developed the Hyatt Hotel chain. The company has its collective hands in businesses across the transportation, energy and construction markets, with products ranging from railroad tank cars to metal fasteners.
Flirting classes make ‘07 list
Outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. recently released a list of what it called 2007’s most unbelievable workplace stories.
Some highlights:
“Workers in Scotland lined up to take classes that encouraged flirting to get ahead in their careers. Class exercises included purring like a kitten and dancing like Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.
“An Iowa woman was fired in January for misuse of company time for keeping a diary about how she avoids work. Some of the entries detailed her efforts to fool management into believing she was hard at work, usually by furiously typing her journal.