John Dzaran, interactive media director at The News Tribune and The Olympian, has been promoted to vice president of advertising for the two South Sound newspapers.

Dzaran has served as interim head of advertising at the two McClatchy-owned publications since January when the previous advertising vice president, Steve Gall, left the papers.

The new vice-president has a broad-ranging background in both print and Internet advertising.

He began his career working on an inserter in the packaging department of Newsday on Long Island, NY. He moved up to become an advertising budget analyst at that paper.

Later, Dzaran held a …

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Tacoma’s MultiCare Health System, is expanding farther into King County.

The non-profit health care provider announced today it plans to buy the hospital and clinics of Auburn Regional Medical Center. The 213-bed Auburn hospital and its associated clinics is now owned by Universal Health Services Inc. Universal is based in King of Prussia, Pa.

“Over the past several years, UHS has concentrated on mid-sized markets where we hold market leading positions and this market no longer fits our long term strategy. We are pleased with this agreement and expect the change in ownership to strengthen the hospital’s ability to serve …

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TrueBlue, Inc., the Tacoma-based temporary labor provider, today announced first quarter earnings double those of the first quarter of last year.

The company said its net income for this year’s first quarter was $1.53 million compared with $766,000 for the first quarter of 2011. That first quarter 2012 income amounts to 4 cents a share.

That increase in earnings came on revenues that rose by 13 percent over the previous year’s first quarter to $311 million.

“We had another quarter of solid execution across the business,” said TrueBlue Chief Executive Steve Cooper. “Customers continue to want a flexible workforce …

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The Port of Tacoma has named three winners of its first annual Summit Awards for their outstanding contributions to the port’s business and the Pierce County community.

The winners are:

* MacMillan-Piper — Business Magnet Award

This company transloads containers at two facilities in the Tacoma Tideflats.

“In the past year, the company double its warehouse transloading space to 202,000 feet to support handling bulk cargoes. MacMillan-Piper also reduced the number of idleing and draying trucks by unloading import containers and load them with exports in the same location, helping to improve air quality,” the port said in making …

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Pierce County’s economy still is struggling to create jobs as county unemployment rose to 9.8 percent in March from a revised 9.6 percent rate in February, according to state Employment Security Department data released today.

My colleague Rolf Boone has more:

The county data, which is not seasonally adjusted, suggests the county has yet to benefit from an uptick in springtime hiring, following the slower months of January and February. County jobless data typically rises to start the new year as employers shed seasonal holiday jobs, then falls as a new round of seasonal hiring begins for construction.

Thurston County …

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Tacoma’s two biggest hospitals earned about $1,000 more per patient in 2010 than the state average, according to an analysis by the state’s largest consumer advocacy group.

MultiCare Health System responded in a statement Tuesday, saying that while it was still reviewing the analysis, it believes the report contains “considerable distortion of a limited set of inpatient hospital data.”

Franciscan Health System, in its statement, echoed those points and said the data analysis was done by a labor union with which it is in “protracted contract talks.”

Washington Community Action Network, based in Seattle, released the 16-page report this …

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The construction workforce in Tacoma grew by 100 jobs from February 2011 to 2012 while Olympia’s construction jobs remained unchanged, according to new figures from the Associated General Contractors of America.

Tacoma was among 171 metropolitan areas out of 337 the AGC studied where the construction workforce was larger than in February last year. Olympia was among 47 cities where the workforce size was unchanged.

Statewide, the employed construction workforce grew by 1,800 or about one percent, the AGC said. Some 129,300 persons worked in Washington construction in February 2012.

The Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area gained the most construction jobs in the …

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Union informational pickets marched outside two Joint Base Lewis-McChord gates today to draw public attention to their yet-unsuccessful negotiations with a private base contractor.

The International Association of Machinists have been negotiating with Strategic Resources Inc. for seven months for an initial contract. The union has filed several unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. The board is reviewing those charges.

“The company has repeatedly shown up at the bargaining table unprepared to negotiate, failed to coherently respond to legally submitted information requests, refused to meet at agreed times, refused to discuss unsafe working conditions, and have …

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