Both the Scab Times and the Scab-Intelligencer have begun hiring "temps" to take the place of striking newspaper workers. If you haven't called to cancel your newspaper subscription, now would be the time to do it. It would also be a good time to pick up your copy of the Seattle Union Record--the paper being printed by the striking newspaper workers three times per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). If your local newsstand isn't carrying it, ask them why and give them the phone number for the Union Record office: 206-328-1196. If you have Internet access, you can read it online at www.unionrecord.com.--Maria Tomchick

As the strike continues, obvious questions arise about the inevitable outcome. It seems unlikely that the Times and P-I will give in. Both papers have grown fatter with each issue since the beginning of the strike. Granted, most of those new pages are Bon ads, but those ads are money in the pocket for the Times and P-I, helping them to continue free newsstand distribution. The P-I is a Hearst newspaper and the Times is 49% owned by Knight-Ridder; both are big newspaper chains with the resources to carry them through a long strike. Yet, one casualty of the strike will surely be the Scab-Intelligencer. The Times has expanded its local section back to full size, but the P-I's local section remains at two anemic pages. In the age of Internet access to almost unlimited national and international news, print publications live or die on their local news coverage. The P-I is lapsing into a coma.--M.T.

Just before the onset of the current strike by Times and P-I employees, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that the union-busting McNewspaper chain Knight-Ridder, which owns 49% of the Seattle Times, marched into a recent Times board meeting and tendered an offer for the other 51%, totaling about a billion dollars (over $600 million in cash, plus assumption of the Times' extensive debts for its new printing plant). What does Knight-Ridder know? That Seattle is about to become a highly profitable one-newspaper town. The Blethen family, which holds the 51%, turned down the offer. They know they're about to make shitloads of money, too. They just can't admit it in the middle of contract negotiations. --Geov Parrish

We just narrowly missed having another strike in progress. University of Washington teaching assistants, who formed a union earlier this year--the Graduate Student Employee Action Coalition (GSEAC)--have been battling with the UW Administration for recognition of their union and the ability to negotiate salaries, healthcare benefits, and workloads. Currently, grad students teach 64% of lower-division classes and over a third of all undergraduate classes at the UW.

But the UW has been acting like sweatshop owners. UW President Richard McCormick claimed that he couldn't recognize and bargain with the union without approval from the State Legislature first. This, in fact, is untrue: there's nothing in the state constitution that prohibits him from recognizing the union. Meanwhile, the UW Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly to urge McCormick to recognize the union, and the school's newspaper, The Daily, endorsed the GSEAC.

The unionization of graduate students is a national movement; so far, 20 other schools around the U.S. have recognized and bargained with graduate student unions. Earlier this year, a high court ruled that graduate students could form bargaining units at private schools, as well as public institutions like the UW. Wisely, last week the GSEAC threatened to strike three days before finals week, when the University relies on them to do an enormous share of the work in administering and grading tests, papers, and final projects. Wisely, Pres. McCormick gave in and finally recognized the union.--M.T.

Just how much in denial city officials are over their culpability in last year's WTO protests was illustrated by a remarkable incident not reported during this year's N30 hoo-hah. In Philadelphia's trials of Republican Party convention protesters, the defendants are asserting, as part of their defense, police misconduct in handling the demonstrations. In response, on Nov. 28 the prosecution showed videotapes of Seattle's 1999 WTO mayhem, in order to demonstrate what real police misconduct looks like. That's in Philadelphia, the most notorious city in the country (remember the MOVE bombing?) for abusing the civil rights of its citizens. People in Seattle don't seem to get how badly Schell and the SPD blew it (and then learned all the wrong lessons).--G.P.