Posts tagged factory
Ford workers told their CEO ‘none of the young people want to work here.’ So Jim Farley took a page out of the founder’s playbook
July 1, 2025 // “The older workers who’d been at the company said, ‘None of the young people want to work here. Jim, you pay $17 an hour, and they are so stressed,’” Farley said. Farley learned some workers also held jobs at Amazon, where they worked for eight hours before clocking in to a seven-hour shift at Ford, sleeping for only three or four hours. As a result, the company made temporary workers into full-time employees, making them eligible for higher wages, profit-sharing checks, and better health care coverage. The transition was outlined in 2019 contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW), with temporary workers able to become full-time after two years of continuous employment at Ford.
Huge win for Trump as world’s second biggest carmaker relocates manufacturing to US
May 12, 2025 // Shifting production lines to make room for Audi models could slow some of those exports, but it would deepen the domestic supply chain. Another potential site is in South Carolina, where VW is breaking ground on a new factory to build electric-based pickups and SUVs under the Scout Motors name. The third option remains undisclosed. An Audi spokesperson didn't immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment. President Trump has claimed that his 25 percent tariffs will revive American manufacturing after decades of decline.
Boeing workers vote to reject contract deal, extending strike
October 24, 2024 // Boeing has announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs and is closing in on a plan to raise up to $15 billion from investors to help preserve its investment grade credit rating, while some airlines have had to trim schedules due to aircraft delivery delays. Ortberg warned on Wednesday there was no quick fix for the ailing planemaker.
Boeing workers going on strike after 96% vote for walkout
September 13, 2024 // The deal included a general wage increase of 25%, a $3,000 signing bonus and a pledge to build Boeing's next commercial jet in the Seattle area, provided the program was launched within the four years of the contract. Although IAM leadership recommended last Sunday that its members accept the contract, many workers had responded angrily, arguing for the originally demanded 40% pay rise and lamenting the loss of an annual bonus. "We're going to get back to the table as quickly as we can," Holden told reporters, without saying how long he thought the strike would last or when talks would resume. "This is something that we take one day at a time, one week at a time.” Workers have been protesting all week in Boeing factories in the Seattle area that assemble Boeing's MAX, 777 and 767 jets.
Tesla beats US claim that it fired factory workers amid union campaign
December 1, 2023 //
Unions hate Biden’s EV push, Schumer & Co. vs. democracy and other commentary
July 6, 2023 // An “alignment between the United Auto Workers and former President Trump over electric vehicles threatens” the “alliance between the union and the Democratic Party,” notes Axios’ Nathan Bomey, with the UAW “withholding an endorsement for Biden’s 2024 campaign.” Already, “one in three UAW members voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.” And “UAW President Shawn Fain ripped” Biden after “the Energy Department announced a $9.2 billion loan to Ford to build battery plants in the South,” since “EV factories won’t employ as many people as traditional assembly plants” and the likely “lower wages at new battery-making joint ventures.” As “Democrats need the Midwest to preserve political power, the president’s commitment to promoting EVs is testing his support among longtime allies
‘Nothing left’: UAW releases video inside Indiana plant, blasts GM downsizing
June 6, 2023 // In response to the idea that GM could still be making semiconductor chips at the facility, Barnas said, "The business environment of semiconductor manufacturing is complex, very competitive, capital intensive and vastly different than that of the past. Our company doesn’t possess the engineering, manufacturing expertise, facilities nor technology capability to do this capital intensive type of work. All this expertise would be necessary to be competitive in this category of advanced semiconductors production." As an example of the cost, Samsung is spending $17 billion to build a semiconductor factory in Texas and Intel said it is spending $40 billion on chip facilities in Arizona, Ohio and New Mexico. Locally, metro Detroit auto parts supplier Bosch said last year it will invest nearly $300 million to extend semiconductor production in its facility in Reutlingen, Germany, starting in 2025. Currently, GM makes a variety of electronic components for its engines, transmissions and air bag sensors for its vehicles at the Kokomo facility, where 169 people work, according to GM's website.