Union Membership up in 2008, Thursday Morning One Liners...

The United Food & Commercial Workers Union here yesterday called for “immediate confirmation” of President Obama’s choice for secretary of labor, Hilda Solis.

Report: Union Membership up Sharply in 2008.

The Ford Motor company said Thursday that it lost $14.6 billion last year, making 2008 its worst year in history as a result of the biggest sales slump in decades, but will not ask for relief.

The Astroland rocket has been donated to the city. [Crains]

Liquor stores are the new victim to box stores with David Patterson's proposal to sell liquor at stores like Whole Foods & Wal-Mart. [Crains]

Starbucks to close more stores, cut jobs.

Shea Stadium is pretty much demolished.

The Fresh Market, the trendy southern grocer, is opening their first store in Connecticut.

Without a single republican vote, President Obama won House approval on Wednesday for an $819 billion economic recovery plan as Congressional Democrats sought to temper their own differences over the enormous package of tax cuts and spending.

Target reduces workforce by 9%.

The Queens Tribune looks at upcoming local elections.


From the WFP

NY Times (Gail Collins): Lilly's Big Day

President Obama is scheduled to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law today. (This is, technically, his second bill-signing, not the first. But you cannot possibly expect us to make a fuss about legislation fixing the salary of the secretary of the interior.) "I'm so excited I can hardly stand it," Ledbetter said recently after the bill passed the Senate. Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president: How Ledbetter, now 70, spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama. How, when she neared retirement, someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, to be really, really guilty of pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees, threw out Ledbetter's case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers.