MIT's ‘Tech Trek’ students hit road

Dozens of MIT Sloan School of Management MBA students will test the job market waters this week when they visit some of the nation's top companies on their annual job-hunting, network-building 
"Tech Treks."

This year's treks will include stops in Seattle and San Francisco to visit tech titans such as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google, as well as Los Angeles and Las Vegas to visit media and entertainment companies such as Sony, Warner Brothers and MGM — the company that wants to build a resort casino in Springfield.

"It's one thing when they come to campus and talk in the abstract about the kind of company they are; it's quite another to be able to go to their headquarters and see how everyone interacts," Zachary Freeman, 27, of Swampscott said. "You get a much more up-close and intimate understanding of those companies, which will help us get a better idea of what we want to do in that space."

Freeman, one of three students who organized the trips to Seattle and San Francisco, said it's a testament to Massachusetts Institute of Technology's brand and alumni base that they were able to set up meetings with executives at so many top-tier companies.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to find a job that gets me started on the road toward being able to design my own product, something that's based on a community," he said. "Mobile web applications are allowing communities to be formed in ways that weren't possible previously. But it's pretty clear there's still a lot of unemployment. So just because I'm in a particular program like MBA, or just because I'm interested in technology, it seems naive to assume I'll be able to find a job. I don't expect it to be handed to me. I have to earn it."

Unlike Freeman, Michael DiBenigno, 26, of Atlanta hopes to have his own startup or work for one in the entertainment or media industry after he graduates next year.

A startup's chance of success today might be better than it was at the height of the recession, he said, "but it might be harder to attract talent if that talent is being recruited by larger, more established organizations."

That's good news for other MBAs such as Jarek Langer who aren't looking to start their own companies straight out of school.

"The opportunities are out there," Langer, 29, said. "Companies are recruiting heavily. They're looking for people to have this kind of MBA and the knowledge that comes with that."

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Health law leaves volunteer firefighting in limbo

FREEPORT, Maine — Fire chiefs and lawmakers are working to protect the system of volunteer firefighting that has served rural America for more than a century but is threatened by an ambiguity in President Barack Obama's health care law.

Small and rural fire departments from California to Maine, which has one of the country's highest percentages of volunteer and on-call firefighters, rely on volunteers to avoid the budget-strapping cost of paying them to be on duty in between fighting fires.

The volunteers are considered employees for tax purposes, a classification that grew out of an ongoing effort to attract firefighters by offering them such incentives as stipends, retirement benefits and free gym memberships.

That leaves open the question of whether the volunteer firefighters fall under the health care law's requirement that employers with 50 or more employees working at least 30 hours a week must provide health insurance for them. Fire departments say they can't afford to pay such a cost.

"Most of these are operating on a shoestring budget — holding pancake dinners to raise money to put enough gas in the truck so they can respond to the next fire, the next medical call," said Dave Finger, director of government relations for the National Volunteer Fire Council.

Faced with the cost of insurance, or being fined if they fail to provide it, departments would likely be forced to reduce the number of hours firefighters can volunteer or eliminate the benefit programs, officials said.

That has both fire chiefs and lawmakers raising concerns.

Darrel Fournier, fire chief in Freeport, a town of about 8,000 people near the coast in southern Maine that's home to L.L. Bean, said his department is bracing for what could be significant costs under the health care law. He expects he'll have to provide coverage for the five firefighters he employs part time. That would cost the city — and ultimately taxpayers — about $75,000, or a penalty of $150,000.

Additionally, in a busy winter with lots of fires, emergency calls and accidents, he said his roughly 50 volunteers could work more than 30 hours a week, meeting the threshold under the law that would require him to provide health insurance for them as well.

To avoid the penalty, Freeport could cut back on the number of hours part-time and volunteer firefighters have to work. But that would mean finding more volunteers to make up the difference, something the department and others across the country already struggle to do, Fournier said. When he started in Freeport in 1972, there was a waiting list of 25 people. After three months actively recruiting in the community, Fournier said he's lucky that he'll soon be interviewing nine potential volunteer firefighters.

"It's pretty amazing how this law is touching different operations," he said in an interview in Freeport's brick firehouse, where yellow fire trucks and ambulances were lined up awaiting the next call. "I'm not sure everyone thought that through."

The question is expected to be answered when the Internal Revenue Service releases final regulations this year before the provision takes effect in 2015. A Treasury spokeswoman said the department is taking the concerns into account as it works toward the final regulations but wouldn't comment on what they're likely to include.

In the meantime, Maine's U.S. senators are backing a recently introduced bill aimed at ensuring volunteer firefighters and other emergency responders are exempt from the health care law requirement. Republicans point to the confusion as another example of the problems with the law, which has been plagued by a fumbled rollout and criticism over canceled health care plans.

"This is yet another adverse and unanticipated impact of Obamacare," said Maine Republican Susan Collins.

City and town leaders are also discussing ways to keep their staff under 50 employees to dodge the costs, Maine Municipal Association officials said. School superintendents are making sure their substitute teachers aren't working more than 30 hours a week to avoid having to cover them, Collins said.

Others point to factors that they say show the concern is overblown. Many small towns only have about 20 to 30 volunteer firefighters, likely making them too small to be affected by the law's mandate. And though Fournier described a busy winter with a lot of work for firefighters, they often fall short of working enough hours to be affected by the insurance requirement. Most volunteers also receive insurance coverage through their primary work as teachers, business professionals or city employees.

It's too early to ring the alarm, concluded Trish Riley, an adjunct professor of health policy at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service.

"With any major piece of legislation like this, there are bound to be unintended consequences," she said. "But you can't leap to conclusions before the federal government has the opportunity to address it."

Finger said he's confident the issue will ultimately be addressed either through the regulations or legislation and is urging fire departments to avoid taking any immediate steps. But he realizes that the political tension over the health care law means that even a small change can turn into a big fight.

"The tough part is, anything having to do with this law is just so partisan that it's difficult to take action on," he said.

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Follow Alanna Durkin on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkin

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Plane slides off runway at NYC's JFK; no injuries

NEW YORK — A plane from Toronto slid into snow as it turned onto a taxiway after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday, halting flights at the airport for two hours and causing residual delays.

"It could have been worse, a much worse scenario," Jordan Houlton told reporters after he emerged from Delta Connection 4100 along with 34 other passengers and crew members about 90 minutes after the slippery diversion of the CRJ2 aircraft.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said there was no immediate report of injuries after the plane landed safely at 8 a.m., only to lose its footing and slide into snow as it turned from the runway onto a taxiway.

The plane was then towed to a gate with passengers on board, she said.

Houlton, a 27-year-old teacher in Mexico, said he managed to sleep through the slide and didn't learn until later that the plane had skidded off course.

"I was sleeping. I woke up and it was 9:30," Houlton said. "A police officer came on to make sure everyone was OK. Luckily, everyone was OK. It was kind of wild. I still can't believe it."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, said operations for domestic and international flights were suspended for about two hours because of slick runways, leaving passengers at crowded gates. Flights resumed after 10 a.m. on two of the airport's four runways, but residual delays for passengers were expected to linger.

The landing came two days after a major snowstorm dumped a half foot of snow in New York City, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights and stranding passengers both in the city and throughout the world who were heading to New York. Passengers from canceled flights continued to fill the few remaining seats on many planes already crowded by holiday travelers.

The Delta Connection flight by Endeavor Air originated in Toronto. Endeavor Air was formerly Pinnacle Airlines.

The flight also came a day after a small plane traveling to Connecticut after a tour of the Statue of Liberty made an emergency landing on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. Neither the pilot nor his two passengers were seriously injured.

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Selling social media clicks becomes big business

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Celebrities, businesses and even the U.S. State Department have bought bogus Facebook likes, Twitter followers or YouTube viewers from offshore "click farms," where workers tap, tap, tap the thumbs up button, view videos or retweet comments to inflate social media numbers.

Since Facebook launched almost 10 years ago, users have sought to expand their social networks for financial gain, winning friends, bragging rights and professional clout. And social media companies cite the levels of engagement to tout their value.

But an Associated Press examination has found a growing global marketplace for fake clicks, which tech companies struggle to police. Online records, industry studies and interviews show companies are capitalizing on the opportunity to make millions of dollars by duping social media.

For as little as a half cent each click, websites hawk everything from LinkedIn connections to make members appear more employable to Soundcloud plays to influence record label interest.

"Anytime there's a monetary value added to clicks, there's going to be people going to the dark side," said Mitul Gandhi, CEO of seoClarity, a Des Plaines, Ill., social media marketing firm that weeds out phony online engagements.

Italian security researchers and bloggers Andrea Stroppa and Carla De Micheli estimated in 2013 that sales of fake Twitter followers have the potential to bring in $40 million to $360 million to date, and that fake Facebook activities bring in $200 million a year.

As a result, many firms, whose values are based on credibility, have entire teams doggedly pursuing the buyers and brokers of fake clicks. But each time they crack down on one, another, more creative scheme emerges.

When software engineers wrote computer programs, for example, to generate lucrative fake clicks, tech giants fought back with software that screens out "bot-generated" clicks and began regularly sweeping user accounts.

YouTube wiped out billions of music industry video views last December after auditors found some videos apparently had exaggerated numbers of views. Its parent-company, Google, is also constantly battling people who generate fake clicks on their ads.

And Facebook, whose most recent quarterly report estimated as many as 14.1 million of its 1.18 billion active users are fraudulent accounts, does frequent purges. That's particularly important for a company that was built on the principle that users are real people.

Twitter's Jim Prosser said there's no upside. "In the end, their accounts are suspended, they're out the money and they lose the followers," he said.

LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said buying connections "dilutes the member experience," violates their user agreement and can also prompt account closures.

Google and YouTube "take action against bad actors that seek to game our systems," said spokeswoman Andrea Faville.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city of 7 million in South Asia, is an international hub for click farms.

The CEO of Dhaka-based social media promotion firm Unique IT World said he has paid workers to manually click on clients' social media pages, making it harder for Facebook, Google and others to catch them. "Those accounts are not fake, they were genuine," Shaiful Islam said.

A recent check on Facebook showed Dhaka was the most popular city for many, including soccer star Leo Messi, who has 51 million likes; Facebook's own security page, which has 7.7 million likes; and Google's Facebook page, which has 15.2 million likes.

In 2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000 to boost the numbers.

In one case, its fan tally rose from about 10,000 to more than 2.5 million.

Sometimes there are plausible explanations for click increases.

For example, Burger King's most popular city was, for a few weeks this year, Karachi, Pakistan, after the chain opened several restaurants there.

While the Federal Trade Commission and several state attorney generals have cracked down on fake endorsements or reviews, they have not weighed in on clicks. Meanwhile, hundreds of online businesses sell clicks and social media accounts from around the world.

BuyPlusFollowers sells 250 Google+ shares for $12.95. InstagramEngine sells 1,000 followers for $12. AuthenticHits sells 1,000 SoundCloud plays for $9.

It's a lucrative business, said the president and CEO of WeSellLikes.com.

"The businesses buy the Facebook likes because they're afraid that when people go to their Facebook page and they only see 12 or 15 likes, they're going to lose potential customers," he said. The company official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he recently moved his company offshore to avoid litigation or cease-and-desist notices.

In Indonesia, a social media-obsessed country with some of the largest number of Facebook pages and Twitter users, click farms proliferate.

Ali Hanafiah, 40, offers 1,000 Twitter followers for $10 and 1 million for $600. He owns his own server, and pays $1 per month per Internet Protocol address, which he uses to generate thousands of social media accounts.

Those accounts, he said, "enable us to create many fake followers."

During an interview at a downtown Jakarta cafe, Hanafiah — wearing a Nike cap, blue jeans and a white T-shirt — said large social networks can boost a business' public profile.

"Today, we are living in a tight competition world that is forcing people to compete with many tricks," he said.

Tony Harris, who does social media marketing for major Hollywood movie firms, said he would love to be able to give his clients massive numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but buying them from random strangers is not very effective or ethical.

"The illusion of a massive following is often just that," he said.

The fake click market has generated another business: auditors.

Robert Waller, founder of London-based Status People, helps clients block fakes. "We have had a lot of people who have bought fake accounts, realized it's a stupid idea and they're looking for ways to get rid of them," he said.

David Burch, at TubeMogul, a video marketing firm based in Emeryville, Calif., said that buying clicks to promote clients is a grave error. "It's bad business," he said, "and if an advertiser ever found out you did that, they'd never do business with you again."

___

Associated Press writers Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Ali Kotarumalos and Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

Follow Martha Mendoza at https://twitter.com/mendozamartha

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Inauguration brings pressure

Days before Martin J. Walsh's inauguration, organizers drove across the state, hand-delivering about 100 credentials and parking passes to performers because FedEx could not guarantee delivery because of last week's storm.

For more than a month, a team of event organizers, politicians and administration officials have been making plans, fixing problems and averting crises.

"It's so many different organizations and parties and considerations," said Denise Kirk, head of Brattle Entertainment in Cambridge, a co-producer of the events. "There's so much detail it's unbelievable."

Inaugurations come with extra complications, Kirk said. By law, Walsh must be officially sworn in by noon.

To go with the expected details are surprises, good and bad.

Bryan Rafanelli, head of Rafanelli Events, spent part of Friday night trying to find a place for thousands of balloons that had been unexpectedly donated.

"We're scrambling," Rafanelli said Friday. "We are right now going through all of that ... how can we work with this donation and make this look awesome and cool?"

For Kirk, the snow threw a wrench into the plans to mail credentials and parking passes to musicians and performers for the Boston College event.

"A whole group of us have formed a convoy and we're going to spend the weekend hand-delivering them to everyone," Kirk said late last week. "It's all over the South Shore, west of the city, north of the city."

Rafanelli, who is helping to put on the celebration that includes Blue Man Group, the Dropkick Murphys and others, managed to skirt any snow complications.

"We moved in all of our sound and lighting equipment and actually gave it to First Night," Rafanelli said. "All our lights were hung, our backdrop is up. We outsmarted the storm."

Kirk, Rafanelli and their partner Live Nation all are veterans of political event planning — Rafanelli put on many of Mayor Thomas M. Menino's inaugurations — but they say inaugurations take something special.

"Every single person working on this has worked eight to 12 hours every single day, including Christmas Eve, the day after Christmas, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Saturdays, Sunday," Kirk said. She said there is "absolutely" more pressure to get things right.

This is all while preparing to host several high-profile politicians and dignitaries, including Cardinal Sean O'Malley.

Walsh's inaugural committee has been co-chaired by a range of politicians and community representatives, including U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch and Felix D. Arroyo, the father of former mayoral candidate Felix G. Arroyo, co-chairman of Walsh's transition team and his newly appointed health and human services chief.

"He made it very clear to us at the outset that it was very important to him that this event be one Boston. It was very important to him that we don't lose sight of that," Kirk said.

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Malibu’s loss of coolant turns into a torrent within

My husband and I have a four-cylinder 2006 Chevy Malibu with 137,000 miles on it. Since the fall of 2012, the car has been leaking coolant. It's not leaking to the ground and it's not leaking into the engine — oil is clean. Five shops including a Chevy dealership looked at the car but have been unable to find a leak. They've done their pressure tests but the car passes and they can't tell where the leak is located. One or two mechanics suggested the head gasket as a potential culprit. Six months ago we added a sealant product to the radiator that seemed to resolve the issue temporarily, but after a few months the cooling system was clogged and the car was starting to overheat. Within the past couple of weeks the car has started to hemorrhage coolant. In the last couple of days we've gone through a gallon of coolant. We need to figure out the real issue and fix it. We would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions you may have for us!

At this point, you've got a big problem. Sample the coolant with a coolant test strip for the presence of hydrocarbons — anything more than a trace would indicate that combustion gases are getting into the coolant. The most likely causes for this are a failed head gasket, cracked head or cylinder.

A second test can be done in one of two ways. With the engine cold, remove the coolant pressure cap and start the engine. If coolant bubbles up and out of the reservoir, combustion pressure is entering the cooling system.
 The more involved test involves removing spark plugs and installing an air fitting adapter in order to introduce air pressure into the cylinders one at a time. Seeing or hearing bubbling in the coolant confirms this type of failure.

Check for a leaking heater core, although this might produce a hot coolant odor in the cabin. Make sure to check the transmission fluid as well. If the cooling chamber in the radiator for transmission fluid is leaking, the two fluids can mix to some degree, and since there's pressure in the cooling system, coolant can be forced into the transmission.

When I brought my 2013 Subaru Outback in for an oil change, the dealer suggested a 15,000-mile checkup that involves changing fluids, filters, etc. at a cost of $450. Even the service person suggested waiting until 30,000 miles. Are those expensive "checkups" really necessary? I realize the need for changing fluids and filters, but it seems that such services every 15,000 or 30,000 miles are a bit too often. How often should one get those expensive checkups?

Looking in my Alldata automotive database at Subaru's recommended maintenance under normal driving conditions, I find the following; oil/filter/tire rotation every 7,500 miles, and replace the cabin filter at 15,000-mile intervals. Subaru recommends including engine air filter and brake fluid changes at 30,000-mile services.

All other components of Subaru's recommend services are "inspections" like fluid levels, brakes, CV-joint boots and the like, many of which you could do yourself.

Unless there's a warranty eligibility issue, I'd stick to the basics and do as much as possible yourself.

The transmission in my 1997 Volkswagen Jetta is beginning to slip and I don't know how to add fluid because there is no dipstick. Any suggestions?

That's because this transmission is effectively sealed and the fluid must be checked or changed through a rather involved process best done at the dealership or professional shop.

Paul Brand, author of "How to Repair Your Car," is an automotive troubleshooter, driving instructor and former race-car driver. Readers may write to him at: Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn., 55488 or via email at paulbrand@startribune.com. Please explain the problem in detail and include a daytime phone number. Because of the volume of mail, we cannot provide personal replies.

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Targeting individual health

In 2014, expect medicine to get personal.

Doctors and researchers around Boston are working to make drugs and health care delivery more individualized than ever. And patients will play a bigger role both in medical research and in their own health care, experts told the Herald.

"With personalized medicine, we're going to know what drugs work on certain people and what drugs don't work on certain people," said Robert Coughlin, president and chief executive of MassBio, the state's biotech industry group.

"I think you're going to see that for all therapies going forward," he said.

At Brigham and Women's Hospital, researchers in the year ahead will hone in on what's known as precision medicine — decoding genes to identify people at risk of developing diseases and treating them before they get sick.

The hospital is expecting an uptick in the number of patients — sick and healthy — who get their genomes decoded to find out their risk levels for a variety of diseases, said Dr. Christine Seidman, director of the Biomedical Research Institute at Brigham and Women's.

Researchers also plan to spend more time simply talking to patients as they work to develop new, life-saving therapies.

"We've really incorporated patients into the mix," Seidman said. "Having patients be involved and saying, 'I can help 
here' is huge."

Patients also will be expected to play a bigger role in tracking their own health with apps that record exercise and blood pressure. "There's an interest now all of a sudden in activity tracking," said Dr. Joseph Kvedar, director of the Center for Connected Health at Partners HealthCare. "So many of the chronic illnesses — diabetes, high blood pressure — would all be improved if patients were just a little more active every day."

Changes in health care delivery are rippling down to the labs where medical devices are invented. Device makers must make sure their products fit into a health care industry where everything — including patient records — is going digital.

"Medical device developers are looking at ways to make sure the device is accurate but also can support the health care delivery system by storing data," said Tom Sommer, president of the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council.

Coughlin said 2014 will shape up to be a healthy year for medical research, with as many as a dozen Massachusetts biotech companies going public. "The fact that Wall Street's coming back is only adding more cash when it's needed," he said.

But as some companies mature and thrive, other researchers are suffering from the loss of a crucial source of funding.

The federal government slashed research dollars last year as part of a round of budget cuts called sequestration.

"There's a great fear right now… of research money drying up," said Kevin O'Sullivan,

president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, a biotech incubator in Worcester. "There's such instability in the federal government."

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DPU may generate regs for electric vehicle charging

The state Department of Public Utilities has started investigating the possible regulation of electricity as a motor vehicle fuel.

Though there isn't a huge number of electric vehicles on the road today, the DPU considers their widespread adoption as an integral part of its electric grid modernization efforts. And Gov. Deval Patrick in October signed a multi-state pledge to increase the use of zero-emission vehicles, including electric cars.

"We're driving in that direction in terms of policies," said Ann Berwick, the DPU's chairwoman.

The DPU will look at how electric vehicles get charged — at people's residences, at businesses for a fee, or whether utility companies should be allowed to own charging systems. It also will consider metering policies and rate structures that incentivize off-peak charging for residential customers with electric vehicles.

"If you had a whole lot of electric vehicles charging at once, then you'd have questions about whether the electric grid at the moment can accommodate that," Berwick said. "There are all kinds of questions related to how they charge, when they charge, what they pay for charging and whether they have special rates."

The DPU also will study whether it should regulate a local hotel or mall with a so-called "juice bar," for example, where customers can plug in their electric cars for recharging.

"Should we regulate it differently depending on whether they're charging for the power or not, or whether it's a fee versus a kilowatt-basis charge?" Berwick asked.

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Boeing contract cuts into local labor influence

SEATTLE — A new labor contract that was approved in a close vote by Boeing machinists secures a major airplane contract for the Seattle area, but it also moves workers away from pensions.

National union leaders, the state's governor and the company all hailed Friday contract approval — which defied local union bosses — as a vital boost to the region's economy.

The tight count exposed deep rifts in the once-powerful union, but with plenty of states lining up to give Boeing exactly what it wanted to get work on the 777X, the aerospace giant had a tremendous advantage.

"It shows that even a strong local is vulnerable and has a limited defensibility to slow the tide of concessions that has been going on across the country," said Leon Grunberg, a sociology professor at the University of Puget Sound who co-authored a book, "Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers."

He added Saturday, "This is happening with a company that's doing very well financially."

Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers approved an eight-year contract extension late Friday by 51 percent, a turnaround from November when the same workers voted down a previous offer by 67 percent.

The passing margin was about 600 votes of about 23,900 counted, according to Wilson Ferguson, president of a local unit of District 751.

Ferguson said Saturday that the vote diminished the local union's power since it conceded some hard-fought benefits they won't be getting back.

Foes of the contract opposed the idea of freezing the machinists' pensions and moving workers to a defined-contribution savings plan.

"The very fact that Boeing was making these demands in the first place just has to be seen as discouraging for average workers," said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at the University of Washington who has a forthcoming book "What Unions No Longer Do."

"This is a very strong union, and if you have a strong union, being forced into givebacks of this sort ... then you can just imagine how little leverage other workers have when negotiating," he added.

But Richard Gritta, a finance professor at University of Portland, said Boeing needed to gain these concessions to remain competitive in the "dog-eat-dog industry" that has seen Boeing and Airbus trade dominance.

"It's a very tough industry. To gain these concessions from labor is critical," he said Saturday.

Local union officials had urged their 30,000 members to oppose the deal, arguing that the proposal surrendered too much at a time of company profitability. They had opposed taking a vote at all but were overruled by national leaders in the Machinists union.

A number of political leaders, including Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, praised the vote, which supporters said keeps thousands of well-paying jobs in the state and solidifies Boeing's presence in the Seattle area, where the company built its first airplanes nearly a century ago.

Inslee, a Democrat, said the vote secured Washington state's "future as the aerospace capital of the world."

Some local elected officials had said there was no other choice but to vote "yes."

Grunberg, the University of Puget Sound professor, said, "Everybody was scared about Boeing moving this huge new production out of state, so I think there was tremendous anxiety about losing this production."

More than 20 other states moved recently to bid for work on the 777X, an updated version of Boeing's best-selling 777. Boeing has said the 777X is expected to carry as many as 400 passengers and be more fuel efficient than the 777.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., on Friday said the decision wasn't an easy one and workers' concerns about income and retirement security were legitimate. But the Democrat also said the agreement guarantees "thousands of good-paying jobs and billions of dollars in economic growth."

Under the terms of the contract extension, Boeing said the 777X and its composite wing will be built in the Puget Sound area by Boeing employees represented by the Machinists union.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Ray Conner said Friday that "the future of Boeing in the Puget Sound region has never looked brighter."

Lynne Dodson, with the Washington State Labor Council, the largest labor group in the state with 450,000 members, didn't see Friday's vote as an indication of declining union influence. "It's an indication of just how far Boeing will go," she said. "It's more a reflection of corporate greed than of union power."

Ferguson, the local union leader, said Saturday morning: "This was a turning point in the labor movement. Pensions were hard-fought battles to get in the first place. Once they're gone, they're gone."

"Their fear and intimidation worked," he added.

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Fed chairman, farm bill on Congress' to-do list

Congress' agenda for 2014 extends from must-passed legislation and nominations to several maybes in a politically charged election year.

MUST DO:

—Senate confirmation of Janet Yellen to become chairman of the Federal Reserve. A vote is scheduled for Monday and the Senate is expected to approve President Barack Obama's nominee. Yellen would be the first woman to head the Fed, replacing Ben Bernanke. His second four-year term as chairman will end Jan. 31.

—A short-term spending bill to keep the government running. The current measure ends Jan. 15. The budget bill passed last year gave House and Senate Appropriations Committees time to work on an omnibus, trillion-dollar-plus measure to run the government through September 2014.

—Raising the nation's borrowing authority, which the Treasury Department says must be resolved by late February or early March. Obama has said he won't negotiate with congressional Republicans, but the GOP is seeking concessions on spending.

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TANGLED UP, VOTES POSSIBLE:

—Renewal of the nation's farm bill, the five-year, roughly $500 billion measure. Compromise has been elusive for months as the House and Senate disagree over cuts to the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program. The House-passed bill would cut $4 billion annually; the Senate bill $400 million.

—Legislation to delay increases in flood insurance for policyholders. Sen. Mary Landerieu, D-La., and other lawmakers representing coastal states have pushed for the measure.

—A new round of penalties against Iran. Twenty-six senators back legislation that could raise sanctions on Iran and compel the United States to support Israel if it launches a pre-emptive attack on the Iranian nuclear program. Obama has pleaded with Congress to hold off, fearing it would undermine the nuclear deal that world powers reached with Tehran last year.

—An extension of unemployment benefits. An estimated 1.3 million people were cut off when the federally funded unemployment payments ended Dec. 28. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has scheduled a vote Monday night on whether to move ahead on legislation by Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., to extend jobless benefits for three months. Some Republicans are looking for the cost of extending benefits to be offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

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TO BE DETERMINED:

—An overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. The bipartisan Senate bill that would provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally and tighten border security has stalled in the House. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has spoken about a piecemeal approach, but some Republicans fear that will lead to negotiations with the Senate and an inevitable final product with some sort of citizenship.

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