BusinessWeek magazine has named Labor Ready one of its Top 100 Hot Growth companies for the second year in a row.

Tacoma-based Labor Ready provides temporary staffing services from its locations around the country and in the United Kingdom.

BusinessWeek compiled its list from all publicly-traded companies with annual revenues of $50 million to $1.5 billion, according to a news release from Labor Ready.

Companies are ranked according to their results over the last three years in sales and earnings growth as well as return on invested capital.

Labor Ready CEO Steve Cooper said that "lower skilled jobs are projected to be the fastest growing opportunities over the next ten years."

"Our customers are primarily small businesses, and small businesses account for half the private domestic product and create more than 60 percent of the net new jobs each year," he said. "We believe we are well positioned to sustain our growth and continue to provide great returns for our shareholders."

The state Utilities and Transportation Commission today approved proposals from the state’s three private-electric companies to remove a federal power system credit from their residential customers’ bills effective June 7.

The companies asked the UTC to allow them to end the monthly credits to their customers because the Bonneville Power Administration stopped making payments to the utilities. BPA took the action in response to a recent federal court ruling.

The benefit appeared as a credit on private electric residential and small-farm utility customers’ bills. The private-electric companies have not increased the amount they charge for electricity, but without the federal credit, customers will see higher bills.

“We have no practical alternative to eliminating the billing credit,” said Mark Sidran, UTC chairman.

The commission’s actions do not affect municipal utilities, such as Tacoma Power, or public utility districts. The three private-electric utilities serve 1.2 million households representing 45 percent of the residential customers in Washington.

Puget Sound Energy customers will see their bills increase by an average of $10.28 a month.

The three-member commission regulates the rates and services provided by the state’s three private electric utilities. Along with PSE, which serves 995,000 customers, the others are Pacific Power, with 124,000 customers in the Yakima and Walla Walla areas, and and Avista, serving 227,700 customers in Eastern Washington.

This week marks the second annual National Business Etiquette Week as proclaimed and celebrated by the Protocol School of Washington (D.C.). And in our own way, we'd like to celebrate by offering a week's worth of basic business etiquette advice.

Today: Basic table manners

• All those knives and forks? Start from the outside and work your way in: On the left are the fish fork, dinner fork and salad fork (or salad fork and dinner fork, depending on the number of courses); to the right come the cocktail fork, soup spoon, fish knife and dinner knife.

•Your dessert fork and coffee spoon are above the plate. That’s your bread on the left and your water (and wine) on the right.

• Leaving the table during the meal? Place your napkin on your seat. Dinner all done? Leave your folded napkin to the left of your plate.

• Elbows on the table? Only between courses. Need to remove something from your mouth? Use the same utensil you used to bring it to your mouth – never use your napkin. Chew with your mouth closed. Butter only the piece of bread you’re about to eat.

• Pass food with the opposite hand – left hand passes to the right, right hand passes to the left. Same goes with receiving something that's passed.

• The best way to win a fight over the check is to arrange payment privately with the captain, head waiter or cashier before the meal begins.

• If somebody makes a mistake: Say nothing. Good manners is a matter of making people feel comfortable.

Tomorrow: Gifts

CB Richard Ellis has brokered the sale of the Forest Cove Apartments, a 388-unit Federal Way apartment complex. The sale, announced today, totaled $32 million, or $82,474 per unit.

"Multiple offers were received from a wide range of value-added buyers, due to the market’s appetite for product in this size range," the company said.

Broker Jim Claeys, CB Richard Ellis senior vice president, credited the sale to the rising cost of new construction, the lack of available land and demand for multifamily housing that "is as high as we’ve ever seen."

The seller was Forest Cove 388 LLC, a private real estate management company managed by Randall Realty of Portland, Ore. The buyer was Forest Cove LLC, owner and operator of properties in the Seattle area.

California developer Mike Bartlett has hatched a new plan to give a new life to one of downtown Tacoma's most prominent eyesores, the Luzon Building.

Bartlett says he now plans to incorporate the six-story brick structure into a new office and retail structure that will fill the parking lot he owns between the Luzon and the Rainier Pacific Bank Building on Pacific Avenue.

Bartlett late last year was poised to turn the former bank building at South 13th Street and Pacific Avenue into a mixed use residential and retail structure. But construction bids greatly exceeded estimates, thus putting the building's resurrection on ice once more.

"The initial estimates for construction were $3.2 million. The construction bid came in at $5.2 million as a stand alone building. It just wouldn't work," he said.

Bartlett said the new structure would have four floors of office space with large individual floors that businesses find desirable. The building would also incorporate 215 parking spaces and 15,000 square feet of retail space on Pacific Avenue and uphill on the Commerce Street side of the building.

A Tacoma engineering firm is now working on plans to shore up the Luzon and to repair the deteriorating vaulted sidewalks around the building.

Philippine Airlines announced today it is increasing its order for Boeing 777-300ER aircraft by two planes.

The airline exercised its purchase rights obtained in March when it ordered two of the twin-jet, long range aircraft. The airline plans to lease two additional 777s from GE Commercial Aviation Services.

Philippine is one of Boeing's oldest customers with a present fleet that includes five Boeing 747-400s and three Boeing 737s. The airline is the oldest in Asia, having flown its first flight on March 15, 1941.

Alaska Airlines saw its passenger traffic increase by 5.7 percent in May, but that increase didn't quite match its capacity increase for the month.

The airline has seen its traffic grow for the last three months, but not as fast as its capacity. The airline, however, was only .4 percentage points short of matching its performance measured by load factor (percentage of seats filled with paying passengers) that it achieved in May 2006 despite a 6.2 percent increase in capacity.

That year-to-year difference was much larger in prior months this year.
In April, for instance, the difference in load factor from the same month in 2006 was 2.7 percentage points. In February, the figure was 2.9 percentage points.

Other legacy airlines delivered higher load factors in May, but many of those had either shrunk their capacity or increased it only marginally.

United Airlines, for instance, cut available seat miles by .5 percent in May and saw its load factor increase from 83.8 percent to 84.6 percent compared with May 2006.

Southwest Airlines, which like Alaska, grew its capacity substantially in May (+8.1%), saw its load factor drop to 74 percent form 76.8 percent in May 2006.

Southwest has told its investors it may throttle back its expansion because it threatens to outrun its traffic increases.

Alaska hasn't mentioned cutting back its plans to grow its capacity. If it can keep its expansion in available seats more in step with its traffic increases as it did in May, it may be able to continue its growth unabated.

The LeMay Automobile Museum has appointed Dominic Dobson as director of corporate development. Dobson has served for two years on the museum's steering committee, and is the founder of Motion Research Corp., created in 1993, which developed the world’s first wireless, mobile head-mounted display systems that are used in both commercial and consumer sports applications

As director, he will oversee corporate sponsorship at the museum.

Dobson has spent more than two decades competing in motor sports events as a driver, with success at Sebring, LeMans, Daytona and Indianapolis. He also served as vice president/general manager for PacWest Racing Group, and has created and managed various racing teams.

He also served as the former president of Cavallino Holdings, Ltd, a collection of historic automobiles, primarily European post-war race cars and rare road cars.

Museum President & CEO, David Madeira announced Dobson’s appointment by saying: “Dominic brings his world-class automobile experience to America’s Car Museum and can provide contacts around the world that will help us build the world’s foremost auto museum. We’re delighted to have him lead our Corporate Development efforts.”

Dobson currently resides in Seattle, Washington on Mercer Island with his wife Kristen and their two children.