Business Briefs: Union report raises questions about Wal-Mart

The union that represents local grocery and retail workers recently released a report on Wal-Mart stores in Snohomish County. The group, which represents 35,000 workers, questions whether the retail giant has been keeping its promises to communities in regard to employee wages and benefits. Wal-Mart has stores in Lynnwood, Tulalip and Arlington, is seeking to open a store in Monroe, and plans another in Marysville. Tom Geiger, communications director for the union, suggests that community leaders in areas where Wal-Mart is looking to add more stores need to ask for conditions in writing. He pointed to a recent dispute between the city of Auburn and Wal-Mart as a case where leaders had an agreement in writing and will be able to hold the retailer to it.

Borders executives to receive bonuses

A lawyer for bookseller Borders Group Inc. says a judge has approved paying executives up to $6.6 million in bonuses as the company works to reorganize under bankruptcy court protection. The Office of the U.S. Trustee objected to an earlier request to pay about $8 million in bonuses. Lawyer Andrew Glenn confirmed that a judge in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved the lower amount on Friday. Borders says the bonuses are necessary to retain executives in key posts. Forty seven executives have left the company since Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in February. Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Borders wants to emerge from bankruptcy protection by August or September.

Breaks keep Twitter in San Francisco

Twitter will keep its nest in San Francisco. Twitter's chief financial officer, Ali Rowghani, announced in a tweet Friday that the company had signed a lease on a new headquarters in the city's Mid-Market neighborhood. The deal comes after the city's Board of Supervisors gave final approval to a tax break that will exempt the company from paying city payroll taxes on new hires. The rapidly growing social media service is expected to add more than 2,000 new employees over the next few years. City leaders pitched the tax break as a way to bring economic revitalization near City Hall.

Computer outage continues Friday

Amazon.com struggled Friday morning to restore computers used by other major websites such as Reddit as an outage stretched beyond 24 hours. Though better known for selling books, DVDs and other consumer goods, Amazon also rents out space on huge computer servers that run many websites and other online services. The problems began at an Amazon data center near Dulles Airport outside Washington early Thursday. On Friday morning, Amazon's status page said the recovery effort was making progress, but it couldn't say when all affected computers would be restored.

From Herald news services