The housing slump continues to take casualties among timber workers in Washington as Weyerhaeuser Co. and union representatives met today in Vancouver to discuss layoffs among logging workers.

Those cutbacks could lead to the loss of 160 jobs in the woods in Aberdeen, Raymond and Pe Ell, reported the Aberdeen Daily World.

Weyerhaesuer is closing its log yard in South Aberdeen and consolidating its log export activity in Olympia and Longview.

The loss of those logging, truck driving and maintenance jobs could bring further misery in communities already hit by the weak demand for wood for housing.

In a move that harkened back to the airline fare wars of the '80s, Alaska Airlines today announced it will award its Mileage Plan frequent fliers double miles for flights between May 6 and June 30

The airline said the double miles program will celebrate InsideFlyer magazine naming it frequent flier program as "Program of the Year."

Here's how to qualify for double miles:

Mileage Plan members must first register online at alaskaair.com. Double miles are valid on Bargain, Value, Full Flex and First Class fare categories for flights on Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. The offer is not valid on tickets booked in the Hot Deals category (G/T fare classes). Customers who wish to enroll in Mileage Plan can do so instantly at alaskaair.com and earn an additional 500 bonus miles.

Surface trade between the United States' top North American trading partners, Mexico and Canada, fell at an all-time high rate in February.

That trade by truck, train or pipeline fell 30.9 percent in February according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

That year-to-year drop was the largest single month drop since the bureau began tracking such trade.

February was the fourth month in a row when trade between the U.S. and Mexico and Canada fell more than 13 percent.

The dollar volume of trade was $47.9 billion, the BTS said.

That drop came before the late April revelation of a swine flu outbreak in Mexico, a development that has strangled trade between the two countries in the last week.

It’s one of the best business events of the year, and last night a few members of Team Trib attended the 8th Annual Business Leadership Awards ceremony as hosted by the University of Washington Tacoma Milgard School of Business.

The stories of the winners are always surprising and well told – this year’s winners were James Milgard, of Milgard Windows & Doors; Bill Matthaei, of Roman Meal; David Ottey, of the Emergency Food Network; and Brian Forth, of SiteCrafting.

The food (I had the chicken, others at the table had the halibut; both were tasty) was proclaimed as good, and better still was the keynote address by William Ayer, chairman and CEO of Alaska Airlines and Alaska Air Group.

We love lists, and Ayer accommodated us with eight tips for business management and four rules to live by.

The tips:
1. Get the right people on the bus.
2. Be urgent about change. Don’t worry about perfection; get to 80 percent and go forward.
3. Improve your capability to execute. If you have a week-long planning meeting, don’t end up with 50 action items. Get one or two, and get to work.
5. What gets measured gets managed. Develop metrics to measure success.
6. Be totally and completely customer-focused. Alaska customers wanted low fares, on-time service and in-plane wi-fi. That’s what Alaska is delivering.
7. As a leader, don’t confuse being popular with doing the right thing. Do the right thing.
8. Develop win-win strategic relationships. An Alaska alliance with American Airlines now makes it easier for customers to “earn and burn miles.”

The principles:
1. Don’t buy things you can’t afford.
2. Don’t borrow money you can’t pay back.
3. Don’t do deals you don’t understand.
4. If it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t.

Looking at where we are, and how we got here, and who isn’t here anymore, I’d say if CEOs had begun following those principles two years ago, or a year ago, their companies - which might now be faltering - wouldn’t be facing such difficulties.