MANHATTAN

LABOR UNIONS ANNOUNCE SUPPORT FOR WEST SIDE STADIUM Several major labor unions came out in support of the controversial West Side stadium for the Jets yesterday, saying the proposed arena would create thousands of jobs and spur the economy. Executives from the Building and Construction Trades Council, the New York Hotel Trades Council, the American Federation of Musicians, and UNITE HERE, an apparel workers union, said the project would create 200,000 temporary construction jobs and 100,000 permanent jobs.

“New York City has the best of everything, except a world-class stadium,” the president of the building and construction union, Ed Malloy told reporters on the steps of City Hall.

The unions are planning a rally outside Madison Square Garden on Sept. 29 to protest that arena’s owner, Cablevision, which they say is lobbying against the West Side stadium project because they have a venue monopoly in the city. The unions are also planning five other rallies outside Cablevision offices. Cablevision did not return calls. Other opponents of the West Side stadium say the project will cost too much money as well as increase traffic and worsen air quality.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

NEITHER BUSH NOR KERRY INVITED TO SMITH DINNER Neither President Bush nor Democratic challenger John Kerry has been invited to the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner this year because issues in the presidential campaign could detract from the “spirit” of the event, said its sponsor, the Archdiocese of New York.

“The tradition of the Smith dinner is to bring people together,” archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling said in a statement yesterday. “Given that issues in this year’s campaign could provoke divisiveness and disagreement and could detract from that spirit, it was felt best to proceed in a different direction while maintaining all of the ideals and values of the dinner.”

The 59th annual dinner, scheduled for next month at The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, will feature President Bush’s father and a former New York governor, Hugh Carey, as speakers, Mr. Zwilling said.

Four years ago, Al Gore and George W. Bush spoke at the dinner, which has become a highly anticipated political tradition a few weeks before election day. The last time neither presidential candidate spoke at the dinner was 1996, when Mr. Gore and Jack Kemp attended instead of President Clinton and his Republican challenger, Senator Dole. Representatives of the Bush and Kerry campaigns declined to comment on the dinner snubs.

– Associated Press

QUEENS

CONGRESSMAN TO PAY $47,000 FEE FOR FUND-RAISING VIOLATION Rep. Anthony Weiner, a potential mayoral candidate in 2005, has been fined $47,000 to settle fund-raising violations in his 2000 campaign for Congress.

The civil penalty stems from an audit by the Federal Election Commission, which issued its findings yesterday. The FEC said Friends of Weiner took “excessive contributions from 183 individual contributors for the 2000 primary and general elections for which they could not produce documentation.” The same audit found the Queens Democrat’s campaign had misreported a loan from the candidate and failed to file necessary paperwork for 29 contributions. The campaign has agreed to pay the fine to settle the issues, the agency said. The three-term congressman is considering running in 2005 against Mayor Bloomberg.

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

HOME HEALTH WORKERS UNION SAYS IT’LL STRIKE The union representing home health aides says more than 2,500 of its workers plan to walk out next week in a dispute over hourly wages with one of the region’s largest providers of home health care. Plans for a strike next Tuesday against Premier Home Health Care Services were announced on Wednesday, and came after 23,000 aides staged a three-day walkout in June.

– Associated Press