Previous weeks' news: Nov. 8-12 -- Nov. 1-5 -- Oct. 25-29

OLYMPIA — State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance appears to have been replaced by a body double who vows to go to court to ensure that gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi maintains his wahfer-thin 261-vote edge in the statewide ballot recount.  Here's the startling evidence:

On Friday, Nov. 12, Chris Vance said, "I hope (Democrats) are not emboldened by their success and start suing everywhere about everything... John Kerry did the right thing by not suing. Slade Gorton did the right thing (in 2000) by not suing."

On Thursday, Nov. 19, "Chris Vance" said, "We're going to have observers everywhere, and we're not going to hesitate to go to court if we think there's something going wrong."

The real Chris Vance had to have been replaced some time between Friday afternoon, when he said not suing was "the right thing," and Tuesday afternoon, when he went to court in an effort to have certain provisional ballots thrown out in King County. The judge rejected his motion.

Undeterred, the new "Chris Vance" now vows more election litigation and even hints at civil unrest should the recount determine that Democrat Christine Gregoire actually won the election.

"If this election turns over, I'm going to have a hard time keeping Republicans calm," said "Vance."

For more information on what that pointing-and-screeching unrest may look like, see the plot summary for the film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), in which imposters appear to have taken the places of the members of a small town not unlike Olympia.

After more than two weeks of ballot counting, lead changes and legal wrangling, we finally know who might be our next governor: Dino Rossi.  Either him or Christine Gregoire.

For now, the result stands at:

• Dino Rossi -- 1,371,414

• Christine Gregoire -- 1,371,153 

But before Rossi can begin spending his 261 votes worth of political capital in Olympia, he must await the outcome of a machine recount that is expected to take until Wednesday, Nov. 24 to complete. Secretary of State Sam Reed predicts that the recount is likely to change several hundred votes.

"If we're within a few hundred votes, we still don't know who's going to win that race," Reed said Wednesday before the "final" result was announced. "There has never been anything close to this in terms of a major race."

How can the recount change votes? According to the Seattle P-I, counties that use optical scan ballots will pick up votes the scanners missed the first time. In the 14 counties that still use punch-card ballots, another trip through the counting machine likely will break loose some -- you guessed it -- hanging chads. But fear not. This state has laws requiring that two of the four corners of the punch hole be separated. So no "pregnant" chads get counted.

To the relief of refresh buttons statewide, the results of the recount will not be released incrementally. Counties will release their results when they are final. Some small counties may manage that task in just one day, but King County is expected to take four working days.

In the unlikely event of a tie, Reed said the winner will be chosen by chance, most likely a coin toss. At press time, no word on which side -- heads or tails -- is the "status quo" call.

The following story appears in today's edition of the New York Times:

Unions Resume Debate Over Merging and Power
By Steven Greenhouse, New York Times reporter

Linda Canny, a nurse with Group Health, a health maintenance organization in Seattle, applauded her union when it dug in against her employer's proposal to take away a much-coveted benefit: she does not have to pay any health insurance premiums.

But Ms. Canny, a member of S.E.I.U. District 1199 Northwest, was flabbergasted when another union representing Group Health employees ignored her union's pleas and agreed to have many of its workers pay $520 a year in premiums.

"We really felt the rug was pulled out from under us when that union agreed to health care premiums,'' Ms. Canny said, referring to a local of the United Food and Commercial Workers. "We felt that was a major step backward. Unfortunately, Group Health has really used that against us."

Angered by such cases, the president of Ms. Canny's union, Andrew L. Stern, has ignited a debate throughout the labor movement by arguing that labor needs a sweeping overhaul, including the merger of many unions and a vast increase in organizing, to reverse its long decline.

Last week, Mr. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, called on the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to adopt a 10-point plan, and the debate he began could lead to the most far-reaching changes in the labor movement in a half-century

Mr. Stern complained that unions were doing far too little to help American workers because they were organizing too few workers and were often undercutting one another in negotiations. He also complained that many unions were too small to contend with giant companies, noting that 40 of the 60 unions in the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had fewer than 100,000 members.

Mr. Stern, who heads the largest and fastest-growing union in the A.F.L.-C.I.O., called for merging the 60 unions into fewer than 20, so that each would be large enough to square off against big corporations.

Alarmed that labor's ranks are shrinking, he also proposed that the A.F.L.-C.I.O., whose unions represent 13 million workers, be authorized to set ambitious goals on how much money each union should spend on organizing.

"I'm totally focused on winning the fight on how to build a labor movement that works for workers," said Mr. Stern, who has a reputation as a maverick and strategic thinker. "It's hard to get the job done the way things are organized right now."

He made his call for change a week after President Bush won re-election, notwithstanding labor's all-out efforts to defeat him. Many union leaders agree that labor badly needs to take steps to reverse its decline, but they favor far less sweeping and painful change than Mr. Stern advocates.

He has warned that unless the A.F.L.-C.I.O. embraces bold changes, his union, with more than 1.6 million members, may leave the federation.

The director of the U.C.L.A. Labor Center, Kent Wong, said labor's weakened state has had important repercussions.

"Unions put together a very impressive campaign to unseat George Bush,'' Professor Wong said. "But the reality is when they represent just 13 percent of the work force, even with their huge effort, they were unable to prevail."

He suggested that if unions represented more of the work force, like the 22 percent level it did three decades ago, the Democrats might have won the election.

Mr. Stern's proposals have set off a fierce debate. Some labor leaders have accused him of arrogantly seeking to dictate to others. Many accuse him of favoring a top-down approach in which the A.F.L.-C.I.O. would tell long-autonomous unions what to do.

Mr. Stern's plan would, for example, force unions to recruit members only in their core industries, barring them from raiding those where other unions dominate.

Some labor leaders say Mr. Stern wants service unions to dominate the A.F.L-C.I.O. at the expense of fast-shrinking manufacturing unions. The president of the machinists' union, R. Thomas Buffenbarger, has even threatened to quit the federation if Mr. Stern gets his way.

Some labor leaders complain that Mr. Stern's proposals to merge unions would allow the big fish to swallow the little fish. His defenders say the heads of some small unions, despite their puny bargaining power, oppose mergers because they desperately want to cling to their positions, power and salaries.

"Stern is absolutely right that the status quo isn't acceptable, that it's a recipe for oblivion," Paul F. Clark, a professor of labor relations at Penn State University, said. "But I don't see how the consolidations he's calling for will get done. You'll find resistance because a lot of union leaders don't want to give any of their power to the A.F.L.-C.I.O."

John W. Wilhelm, the longtime president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, which merged last summer with Unite, the textile workers' union, urged leaders of other small unions to follow his example.

"The fundamental problem is that too many unions don't have the resources to meet the challenges," Mr. Wilhelm said. "We're dealing with global corporations in virtually every industry. I was very proud of our union. We had 265,000 members. We were doing great stuff. But we didn't have the size, strength and resources that we needed."

How far Mr. Stern goes with his push for change will depend on his one-time mentor, John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

If Mr. Sweeney, Mr. Stern's predecessor as head of the service employees, pushes hard to sell the proposals to other unions, the federation's executive council might adopt many of the them at its meeting in February.

Last week, Mr. Sweeney said a new committee he heads would take a hard look at proposals by Mr. Stern and others and would make far-reaching recommendations.

"It will be a very serious effort," he said. "The labor movement has through the years tried to change with changing times."

He said there might be resistance.

"We have to recognize and acknowledge the fact that individual unions are autonomous," Mr. Sweeney said. "There may be some differences of opinion about the degree of change."

Larry Cohen, executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America, who is widely expected to win its presidency next year, has his own proposals, which focus on expanding the right to bargain collectively. He complained that many companies break the law in fighting unionizing and that public employees in many states do not have the right to form unions. "What we should focus on is strengthening bargaining power," he said.

In Mr. Stern's view, one factor undercutting bargaining power is that in some industries 10 or more unions are active and often trip over, and undercut, one another. He has proposed giving the A.F.L.-C.I.O. the power to designate two or three unions in each industry to take the lead in bargaining and organizing.

To show how well this strategy can work, S.E.I.U. officials point to a contract approved recently by many workers at the Valley Medical Center in Renton, Wash. Four unions represent workers at the hospital, and they agreed that the service employees, which represents the registered nurses and some other employees and is the largest union at the hospital, should lead the talks.

The service employees obtained an agreement that its members would not have to pay health insurance premiums, paving the way for similar provisions in contracts for the other unions, many of whose members had previously paid about $1,000 a year for family coverage.

"This shows that if you have a dominant union that's willing to fight and sets a standard, management usually has to bring everybody up," said Diane Sosne, president of District 1199 Northwest.

Shannon Halme, an official with a union for Valley Medical office and clerical workers, said: "I don't think we could have gotten this by ourselves. We flew on the coattails of what the nurses got."

In the latest election tally, labor-endorsed Democrat Christine Gregoire has regained the lead over Republican Dino Rossi by 158 votes in a governor's race increasingly likely to be subject to mandatory recount. Gregoire's chances of winning were greatly improved Monday when it was learned that King County had about 10,000 more ballots than previously expected, citing an extraordinary number of late returns from voters overseas or serving in the armed forces.

Republican Dino Rossi clings to a 1,920-vote lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire in the latest tally for the neck-and-neck governor's race. The deadline for county auditors to certify the results is this Wednesday, but the parties' legal jockeying over provisional ballots and the possibility of a recount could delay the outcome even further.

Political wonks monitoring absentee ballot trends are predicting that Rossi will win by about 3,000 votes, but their models assume no change in the trends of late absentee ballot counts. In addition, they assume no substantial boost for either side in the counting of provisional ballots. Gregoire's campaign holds out hope that those provisional ballots, many of which were cast in King County and other urban areas that lean Democratic, will give her the boost she needs to prevail.

County auditors estimate there are about 41,600 votes remaining to counted. Following is the list of counties where new tallies are scheduled to be released today and the estimated number of remaining ballots for each (click here for up-to-the-minute results):

• 11:30 a.m. -- Adams (25 votes)

• Noon -- Clark (2,200)

• 2:30 p.m. -- Kittitas (750)

• 3 p.m. -- Kitsap (2,500); Whitman (600)

• 4 p.m. -- King (11,000)

• 4:30 p.m. -- Walla Walla (2,000)

• 5 p.m. -- Snohomish (2,500); Chelan (500); Franklin (250); Douglas (200); Lincoln (20); 

• 5:30 p.m. -- Pierce (3,333)

Following are updated election results -- as of 8 a.m. Monday morning -- in the Governor's race and the races for state legislature within a 1,000-vote margin where Labor Neighbor activities were conducted for WSLC-endorsed candidates. (Endorsed candidates in bold;  * indicates incumbents.)