On-line travel company Expedia Inc. announced today it will close its Tacoma call center office by the end of the year.

The company plans to transfer some of the work the Tacoma office performed to an expanded call center in Las Vegas.

The company said an unspecified number of workers in Tacoma will be offered jobs in Expedia's Bellevue headquarters or in the Las Vegas call center.

The company didn't say specifically why it is closing the Tacoma operation, one of four call centers it maintains around the country.

It did issue a general explanation: "In making the decision to grow the Las Vegas location and close the Tacoma location, Expedia concluded that these geographic changes in its call center footprint would enable the company to most effectively serve its customers and address its evolving business needs."

"Expedia is providing support to any employees transitioning out of the company," the company said in a press release.

Tacoma temporary staffing provider TrueBlue Inc. stayed profitable in the third quarter despite a 27 percent revenue drop compared with the third quarter of 2008.

The company today announced net income of $8.2 million for the quarter ending Sept. 25. That's 19 cents a share.

That income is about half the $16.3 million or 38 cents per share the staffing company made in the same quarter last year.

Revenues were $284.8 million compared with $387.9 million for the same period in 2008.

"Our strict cost management combined with ongoing stabilization in the same branch revenue drove our results this quarter," said TrueBlue Chief Executive Steve Cooper. The company's ongoing efforts to reduce is workers compensation costs also helped keep the company in the black, he said. TrueBlue has reduced workplace injuries by 60 percent over the last six years.

The downtown Tacoma-headquartered company has closed 155 branch offices and cut company-wide employment from 3,300 to less than 2,600 since the first of the year.

Management has trimmed other expenses by 30 percent, he said.

The company's results were about six cents a share better than its own predictions, said Chief Financial Officer Derrek Gafford. That improvement was the result of better-than-expected revenues, particularly from a single large customer whose need for temporary staffing has continued longer than expected.

The company's economy measures, said Cooper, have left TrueBlue, parent company of such brands as Labor Ready, Spartan Staffing, CLP Resources, Plane Techs and TLC, well-positioned to benefit from any upswing in business once business activity increases.

The company is beginning to see some freshening of demand in the Midwest where auto parts suppliers are ramping up their factories.

"It really started with Cash for Clunkers, but it's continued on after that," said Cooper.

The construction industry, a major source of demand for temporary help, is still ailing, company officials said.

The startup of some federal stimulus-funded projects will begin happening late this year and early next, said Cooper. Those projects may stimulate demand for more workers.

Those stimulus projects have been slower to leave the starting line than the government had hoped, but with preliminary planning and permitting done, they should begin moving forward, he said.

Tacoma Goodwill Industries plans a grand opening next week for its new Puyallup store just off River Road in a remodeled former cinema.

The new 17,000-square-foot store will open with ceremonies beginning Oct. 29 at 8:45 a.m. Puyallup Mayor Don Malloy, Goodwill Board President Bob Bruback and Goodwill Chief Executive Officer Terry Hayes will officiate at the event.

The new store at 1200 Fourth St. NW next to KMart will employ about 35 workers and have a payroll of $500,000 including benefits, said Hayes.

During the Oct. 29 through Nov. 1 grand opening, shoppers will have an opportunity to win a DVD player, an iPod Nano and $50 gas cards.

On the opening day only, Goodwill will have a mattress truckload sale. Mattress and box spring sets will be priced at $199 for twins, $249 for fulls, $299 for queen-sized and $399 for king-sized. A frame will be included with the purchase free.

The store is the 24th for Tacoma Goodwill, the 10th in Pierce County.

Boeing needs to bring more of its engineering work back inside Boeing, the company's chief executive said today after announcing a $1.6 billion loss for the third quarter.

Jim McNerney said the company went too far in attempting to develop the revolutionary 787 Dreamliner while also installing a new design and production scheme that relied heavily on outside suppliers.

Much of the company-wide quarterly loss was driven by $2.5 billion in new costs associated with design and production problems on the Dreamliner. The company also took $1 billion in additional losses on the development and production of a second new project, a next generation 747.

"The industry got a little overheated," said McNerney addressing the root of the 787 and 747 problems. "Baselines set up were very aggressive."

Attempting to build a new plane with pioneering composite technology while simultaneously pushing major design and construction responsibility out to partners was "a bridge too far," he said.

"We need to bring more of the engineering, especially as the systems level, back into Boeing," he told reporters and analysts in a conference call.

The Dreamliner is now nearly 2 1/2 years late in flying for the first time, and the 747-8's first flight schedule recently slipped into the first quarter of 2010.

Boeing's losses for the quarter amounted to $2.23 a share. The 787 and 747 charges alone amounted to a $3.59 a share. Good performance in other parts of the company blunted those Dreamliner and 747 losses.

"The fundamental operating engine of the company is running well," McNerney noted.

While some airlines have deferred or canceled orders in the first nine months of the year, the commercial airplanes side of the company still has a backlog of orders -- $254 billion -- that represent more than seven years of production, he said.

The company has no plans to reduce the production pace of its bread-and-butter 737 at its Renton plant, he said, despite some deferrals by some customers.

Boeing will continue laying off workers to adjust to changing demands in other sectors, particularly in defense where the government is tightening up programs and in the service sector where airlines are cutting back on expenses, the Boeing CEO said.

Union workers at Boeing's helicopter plant near Philadelphia have ratified a new contract that will give them annual raises totaling 15 percent along with $7,000 in lump sum payments over five years.

Member of the United Aerospace Workers Union are set to receive a 3 percent raise in the contract's first year, a two percent raise in the second year, 3 percent raises in the third and fourth years and a 4 percent raise in the fifth year of the contract. Those same workers will receive a lump sum payment of $3,500 the first year and payments of $1,500 in the fourth year and $2,000 in year five.

The union represents 1,789 workers in the company's Ridley Park, Pa. helicopter plant. The agreement was reached Oct. 14, and workers voted on it last week.

The plant with more than 5,400 employees produces the CH-47 Chinook twin-rotor helicopter and the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Tacoma-based blue collar temporary labor provider TrueBlue Inc. says it will announce third quarter results Oct. 21.

The company will discuss those results in a 2 p.m. Webcast available on its Web site.

Analysts on average expect the company to report earnings of 13 cents a share. That compares with 9 cents a share in the second quarter.

TrueBlue is the parent company of Labor Ready, Spartan Staffing, CLP Resources, Plane Techs and Transportation Logistics Co.

Washington’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased to an estimated 9.3 percent in September, up from a revised rate of 9 percent in August, according to the state Employment Security Department in a release this morning.

The estimated rate for August had been reported as 9.2 percent last month, but it was revised downward after more analysis.

The state lost an estimated 16,000 non-agricultural jobs in September, seasonally adjusted, after an estimated loss of nearly 12,000 jobs in August.

Industries that lost the most jobs last month were government, which cut 7,100 jobs, mostly in K-12; manufacturing, down 2,700; and construction, which lost 2,300 jobs.

Industries that added jobs in September include retail trade, with 300 new jobs; transportation, warehousing and utilities, up 100; and information, up 100, according to the release.

Year over year, Washington had 131,200 fewer jobs last month than in September 2008, a 4.4 percent decrease.

Nationally, employment declined by 4.2 percent over the past year.

An estimated 312,692 people (not seasonally adjusted) in Washington were unemployed and looking for work in September.

Bellevue's Paccar is closing a strike-plagued Peterbuilt truck plant in Denton, Tenn. and consolidating all Peterbilt heavy-duty truck production at a non-union plant in Denton, Texas.

The company said the weak market for heavy-duty Class * trucks is at the root of the closure, not the plant's labor problems.

The Tennessee plant hasn't produced a truck since the summer of 2008 when the United Auto Workers and Paccar couldn't agree on a new contract.

The Tennessee plant has endured strikes in 1992, 1998 and 2002.

The market for heavy-duty trucks has fallen to about half the number the trucking industry bought in 2005 and 2006.

Russell Investments is leasing about 215,000 square feet in its new Seattle home, according to a Seattle Times report today.

That's about 10,000 square feet less than the space the firm currently uses at its headquarters at 909 A St. in Tacoma. A report from Colliers International for the third quarter of 2009 put the available office space at 909 A St. at 224,000 square feet.

The Times' Eric Pryne reported this morning on leasing at the WaMu Center -- the building Russell's parent company Northwestern Mutual bought last month for $115 million.

Pryne's report focused on how rents in the WaMu Center compare to historic prices for downtown Seattle office space. But TNT readers might be more interested to learn what the recent listings for space in the building at 1301 Second Ave. reveal about Russell's future.

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The developers of a proposed Marriott hotel on downtown Tacoma's Thea Foss Waterway may bypass the Tacoma City Council in an effort to get a timely start on the new hotel.

Mark Hollander of Hollander Investments asked the council today to remove consideration of an environmental indemnity agreement for the hotel from tonight's council agenda.

The council has balked at approving that relatively routine environmental liability agreement because some members are unhappy with the design of the new hotel.

Hollander told the city he and the present owners of the hotel site need more time to study their options for further development.

A group led by Seattle hotelier Robert Thurston now owns the property. The city has already signed an environmental indemnification agreement with the Thurston group.

Hollander and Thurston are considering simply transferring that agreement to Hollander when the property is sold to the Bellingham developer. If the transfer is sufficient to protect the developer and the city, then the council would not have to be involved.

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Boeing is mulling over whether to propose a new aircraft specifically designed to replace the Air Force's fleet of 550 T-38 trainers.

That's the word from Flight International which says the company may enter the $10 billion contest to replace the basic Air Force jet trainer with a new design.

The Air Force has expected only existing aircraft such as the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 and the Korea Aerospace Industries-Lockheed Martin T-50 to enter the contest.

The M-346 is built in Italy. The T-50 is assembled in Korea.

A contract for hundreds of trainer aircraft would keep Boeing's St. Louis factories busy for years. The aircraft built there now, the F-15 and F-18 fighters, are aging and will end their production in a few years.

The Air Force's folo-on fighter, the F-35, is being built by Lockheed Martin.

TUI Travel is negotiating to cancel 10 of the 23 orders it has secured with Boeing for the company's 787 Dreamliner, Flightglobal.com reported today.

The European tour operator, however, will add purchase rights for an additional 13 of the twin-engine aircraft.

The company said in an update Tuesday: "We have been in extensive discussions with Boeing, and it is the intention of both parties to agree to cancel 10 of the 23 787 aircraft that we had on order."

The 787 is more than two years late making its first flight because of production, design and labor issues. Boeing has already lost 60 some orders for the aircraft.