Two prominent Democratic congress members say a $3 million settlement between Cintas Corp. and federal workplace safety regulators is insufficient because it downgrades the severity of the company’s violations and gives it two years to install new safety equipment.

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The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is suffering from a poor economy and continuing financial trouble.

The center announced today that they will be laying off 17 full-time employees, by the end of the year, leaving a staff of 47.

The museum will also no longer be open on Sundays.

Last year, the Freedom Center was caught up in a battle at City Hall when Councilman Chris Monzel attempted to redirect a proposal to give the center $800,000 to pay for speed humps.

At the time this sum was delivered, a $25 million debt remained for the $110 million construction of the center.

The museum has been criticized by state and local officials for requesting public funds after Freedom Center President Ed Rigaud said the center wouldn’t ask for additional public money to balance its books, even after projected and actual attendance numbers dropped dramatically.

Attendance at the center peaked in its first full year open in 2005 at just over 200,000. The numbers have been falling ever since.

For Christmas, the Freedom Center might want to ask for financial independence.

Humana announced Wednesday that they'll be adding 700 jobs to their Cincinnati operations by 2010. With the struggling economy, this is welcome news.

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As recently as last week, The Cincinnati Enquirer’s top editor said he wasn’t sure whether to expect more layoffs in the New Year, but executives at the newspaper’s parent company all but confirmed additional pink slips are on the way.

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Procter & Gamble is continuing its legal struggle with Kraft. What, you may ask, is vexing them?

In August of last year, P&G brought a case against Kraft, not for being the cheesiest but for selling coffee in plastic containers. That's right, 15 months in court over the materials used in packaging.

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This week’s issue of CityBeat features an article about a lawsuit that a disgruntled customer filed against Fifth Third Bank about how the institution processes debit card transactions.

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A Cincinnati official who supports a deal negotiated by the city manager to accept a Duke Energy rate hike in exchange for getting $7 million from the company for a proposed streetcar system says it would have been “fiscally moronic” for the city not to accept it.

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Politics is often a game of strategy, and an area anti-tax group is well-known for taking the offensive on most issues it advocates. A recent dispute over a referendum on a payday loan law, however, has the group facing stinging criticism for getting its facts wrong and overstating its own influence.

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Rising gasoline prices, and not political ideology, is the reason that area United Dairy Farmers stores stopped carrying The New York Times, a corporate spokesman insists.

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Two proposals by institutional shareholders designed to increase independent oversight at Cintas Corp. failed to gain a majority of votes Tuesday at the company’s annual meeting.

The proposals included one by the North Carolina Retirement Systems, which represents the pension investments of unionized North Carolina state government workers. It sought to have an independent chairman — unconnected to the Farmer family — appointed to the board of directors to enhance oversight and improve the company’s abysmal safety record.

The other proposal sought an advisory shareholder vote on executive pay.

As the meeting was conducted, more than 300 protesters comprised of Cintas workers from across the nation and their local supporters rallied outside of the company’s Mason headquarters (pictured above), demanding an end to what they described as egregiously unsafe working conditions at the uniform supplier’s industrial laundries.

A proposal by another institutional shareholder — CtW Investment Group — was also defeated that would have blocked the appointment of David Phillips to the Cintas board due to what it described as an undisclosed conflict of interest and weak leadership in his role as the company’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee chairman.

(See my recent news article "Cintas Under a Microscope" for background on these shareholder proposals.)

Cintas didn’t reveal the vote totals for board appointments. CtW representatives said about 35 percent of outside shareholders opposed Phillips’ appointment, which amounted to a “vote of no confidence.”

CtW had alleged that in his role as committee chairman, “Mr. Phillips bears responsibility for many of the company’s questionable governance practices, which include … inadequate response to legitimate governance concerns."

Further, CtW disliked that Phillips serves as trustee of Cincinnati Works, which received more than $200,000 in charitable contributions from foundations controlled by Cintas insiders and affiliates.

Each of the proposals had been endorsed by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), an organization trying to unionize Cintas workers for more than five years.

Some Cintas employees who were given proxies by shareholders were denied access to the annual meeting, according to UNITE.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited at least 10 Cintas facilities nationwide in just over a year for safety violations, including one that resulted in the death of a worker. Since 2003 Cintas has been cited for more than 170 OSHA violations in its facilities, including more than 70 citations that OSHA deemed could cause “death or serious physical harm."

(Photo of protest outside Cintas annual meeting on Oct. 15 by Cameron Knight. See more photos here)