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THE BULLETIN • THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2021 A11 A11 B USINESS THE BULLETIN • THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2021 q DOW 33,896.04 -164.62 q bendbulletin.com/business NASDAQ 13,299.74 -3.90 q S&P 500 4,115.68 -12.15 p 30-YR T-BOND 2.40% +.02 Apple CEO Tim Cook will take the witness stand Friday in a high- stakes courtroom battle over the lucrative com- missions the iPhone maker has been raking in from its mobile app store. Cook’s highly antic- ipated testimony was confirmed Wednesday during the trial that has been unfolding in an Oakland, California, court- room. Epic Games, the maker of the popular video game Fortnite, is trying to prove that commis- sions ranging from 15% to 30% on transactions in apps installed on iPhones, iPads and iPods are part of a monopoly that Ap- ple has created around a fortress blocking other payment options on its mobile devices. Apple has brushed off the allegations as a desperate attempt by Epic to boost its own profits by breaching a contract covering a system that requires a small portion of the 1.8 million apps in its store to pay the commissions on transactions. Buttigieg renews hiring program Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday reinstated an Obama-era pilot program that aims to aid minority and disadvantaged people by ensuring local hiring for public works construction projects, reversing a decision by the Trump administration. Buttigieg made the an- nouncement after tour- ing the Frederick Doug- lass Memorial Bridge, a decades-old span across the Anacostia River that’s undergoing a massive re- construction. The bridge project was launched un- der the local hiring rules that Buttigieg is bringing back. The Transportation Department’s four-year pilot initiative, originally launched by the Obama administration in 2015, will permit state and local agencies receiving federal transit or highway money to impose local hiring preferences, such as those favoring veterans, minorities and low-in- come workers. Farmworker abuse case nets $4.8M The U.S. government has collected more than half of an $8.1 million judgment awarded six years ago to 54 Thai farm- workers abused while working on a Maui pine- apple plantation, the Equal Employment Op- portunity Commission said Tuesday. The Justice and Trea- sury departments col- lected $4.8 million from Maui Pineapple and its entities, and the EEOC will distribute the money to the workers, said Anna Park, the commission’s re- gional attorney. The EEOC sued Global Horizons, a labor contrac- tor, and six Hawaii farms a decade ago. Five farms settled for a total of $3.6 million. A U.S. court in Hono- lulu in 2015 found the remaining farm — Maui Pineapple Co. — was jointly liable with Global Horizons for $8.1 million. The company, which is now known as Maui Land and Pineapple Co., didn’t return a phone call seek- ing comment. — Bulletin wire reports CRUDE OIL $63.36 -2.13 p GOLD $1,881.30 +13.50 q SILVER $28.01 -.30 q EURO $1.2168 -.0061 COVID-19 | Oregon Legislature BRIEFING Apple CEO to testify ahead of Epic trial q Lawmakers continue residential Unemployed must look for foreclosure ban until end of year work to maintain benefits BY PETER WONG Oregon Capital Bureau Gov. Kate Brown is the final stop for a bill that reinstates a moratorium on Oregon resi- dential foreclosures through June 30, and possibly to the end of this year if she chooses to extend it by executive order. The House gave final ap- proval on Wednesday to an amended House Bill 2009 by a 36-20 vote. The Senate ap- proved it Monday . The bill clarifies that a borrower must give notice to the lender of an inability to pay the mortgage — and show how the coronavi- rus pandemic affected the bor- rower’s ability to pay, such as a loss of job or income. “We continued to work on the language as some con- cerns came up after this bill had passed the House,” said Rep. Paul Holvey, a Democrat from Eugene and the bill’s floor manager. Brown imposed a morato- rium by executive order at the outset of the coronavirus pan- demic more than a year ago. A June 2020 special session of the Legislature wrote Brown’s or- der into law, and let her extend it by order through Dec. 31. Unlike the original state mor- atorium, which applied to all properties, House Bill 2009 ap- plies only to a total of five res- idential properties per owner. Each property can contain no more than four units. Commer- cial property is excluded. See Foreclosure / A12 BY MIKE ROGOWAY The Oregonian Oregonians receiving un- employment benefits will soon have to actively seek work to continue receiving benefits, a major shift the state says reflects the rapidly easing pandemic and Ore- gon’s tight labor market. Federal law generally re- quires workers to look for a job if they’re collecting unem- ployment benefits. But Con- gress allowed states to waive that requirement last year, in the early days of the pandemic, in recognition of the fact that many businesses had closed altogether to prevent the coro- navirus from spreading. Oregon has left that waiver in place into this spring, long after most businesses re- opened. David Gerstenfeld, acting director of the Oregon Employment Department, said Wednesday that the state will resume enforcing job- search requirements over the next two months. See Unemployment / A12 A donation attendant working for Goodwill at the Westbrook, Maine, store looks at a broken picture frame and a broken cat scratching post. During the past year, several Goodwill agencies say they’ve seen an increase in unwanted donations, and in turn, their trash bills. Goodwill message: PLEASE Heather Steeves/Goodwill Northern New England STOP DONATING TRASH BY HALELUYA HADERO Associated Press B roken furniture. Flashlights with leaking batteries. Disfigured Barbie dolls. Across the country, thrift stores have been flooded by household items, the offer- ings of people who have been homebound for months and are eager to clear out some of their possessions. Problem is, too many such items could most accurately be described as trash. Many of the donations are defective or worn-out items — gifts from well-intentioned people who want to reduce waste but who donate items that simply shouldn’t be donated. The thrift stores, wary of discouraging do- nations, say that, as always, they welcome most contributions, especially after a recession that inflicted harm most heavily on the lowest-in- come Americans, many of whom now depend on them. And they note that most of the items that arrive at their stores remain perfectly ac- ceptable. But in the midst of spring cleaning sea- son, the stores want to slow a barrage of un- wanted contributions that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m careful not to shake my finger at donors because without them, we wouldn’t have a busi- ness model,” said Megan Fink, a marketing ex- Google announces new privacy features for Android phones BY GERRIT DE VYNCK The Washington Post Mobile phone apps con- stantly hoover up data about their users. At Google’s annual developer conference on Tues- day, the company announced a few new features that let people with phones running its An- droid operating system limit that harvesting. But the changes stopped short of forcing apps to spe- cifically ask permission to use people’s data to advertise to them across the Web, a policy Apple instituted on its iPhones in February. Instead, Android will have a “privacy dashboard” that al- lows people to control exactly which apps have access to their location, camera and micro- phone. An indicator will also light up whenever an app is listening or recording video. If users want to stop apps from using their data for advertising purposes, they have to go into settings and disable ad tracking completely from the phone. The situation shows how important privacy is for the biggest tech companies in con- vincing customers to use their products — and how deeply ingrained advertising is in Google’s business. Ad IDs have been widely used for years, and though privacy advocates have long urged people to turn them off on their phones, doing so has generally required digging through multiple levels of set- tings. See Android / A12 ecutive at Palmetto Goodwill, which operates 31 stores in South Carolina. “But we are trying to educate.” For the thrift stores, such donations aren’t just a hassle to dispose of. They also magnify their garbage-disposal costs. The stores need time and staffing hours to process them. “It actually ends up costing Goodwill rather than helping them,” said David Courard-Hauri, a professor of environmental science and sus- tainability at Drake University. The spikes in trash expenses can divert money away from other services the agencies could spend in their communities, like work- force development programs. Bitcoin prices plunge Explainer: How it works, Musk’s involvement and who oversees it Associated Press NEW YORK — Even by Bitcoin’s standards, Wednes- day was pretty wild. The price of the famously volatile digital currency fell nearly 30% at one point after the China Banking Associa- tion warned member banks of the risks associated with digital currencies. The decline narrowed to below 10% in the afternoon, but Bitcoin had still lost about $70 billion in market value in 24 hours. Bitcoin has lost about 38% of its value since April 13 when it hit a high of more than $64,800, according to Coindesk. The China warn- ing was just the latest head- wind: Before Wednesday, Tesla’s decision to not accept the digital currency as pay- ment for cars — after it said it would — and murmurings in Charles Krupa/AP file The Bitcoin logo on the display screen of a crypto currency ATM at the Smoker’s Choice store in Sa- lem, New Hampshire, in February. Washington about tighter reg- ulation of digital currencies had put pressure on Bitcoin. The price is still up about 31% in 2021 and nearly 300% from a year ago. How Bitcoin works Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows us- ers to spend money anony- mously. The coins are created by users who “mine” them by lending computing power to verify other users’ transac- tions. They receive Bitcoins in exchange. The coins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other currencies. Some businesses take Bitcoin as payment, and a number of financial institutions allow it in their clients’ portfolios, but overall mainstream accep- tance is still limited. Bitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. See Bitcoin / A12
