SPEEA faces election in Wichita

A group of technical staff at Boeing's defense plant in Wichita, Kan., has forced an election that could decertify the white-collar union representing them.

The vote will be held sometime in June, said Bill Dugovich, spokesman for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA).

The group organizing the effort presented the National Labor Relations Board with the signatures of at least 30 percent of the 903 technical workers represented, prompting the election. Only 259 of those represented are dues-paying SPEEA members.

A separate SPEEA unit representing 734 engineers at the Wichita plant is not involved.

Boeing's refusal to give SPEEA members in Wichita the same benefits as its members in the Puget Sound region has weakened the union there.

CombiMatrix

Stock sale to precede spin-off

Mukilteo-based CombiMatrix will receive $5 million through a sale of common stock and warrants that will help buoy the company before its spin-off from Acacia Research.

Under the terms of the deal, Calif.-based Acacia will sell about 6.8 million units at 74 cents each to a select group of investors, including Dr. Amit Kumar, president and CEO of CombiMatrix, and two other directors. Each unit consists of one share of Acacia Research/CombiMatrix common stock and a 5-year-warrant to buy 1.5 shares of stock at an exercise price of 55 cents a share. The offer closed Monday.

CombiMatrix is a life-sciences company developing customizable arrays used to identify and determine the roles of genes, gene mutations and proteins. The company is expected to spin off from Acacia within the next 60 days, Kumar said.

Microsoft

Principal used bootleg software

A Russian court Monday found the principal of a village school guilty of using bootleg Microsoft software and ordered him to pay a fine of about $195 in a case that was cast by Russian media as a battle between a humble educator and an international corporation.

Microsoft, however, has said repeatedly it had nothing to do with the charges, which were brought by Russian prosecutors in the Ural Mountains region where principal Alexander Ponosov's school is located.

Ponosov has maintained his innocence, saying that the computers at the school came with the pirated versions of the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office software already installed.

Compiled from Seattle Times staff and The Associated Press