Many young people enter the job market wanting to ‘make a difference.’ This has probably been the case since the dawn of time: people want to do “good work.” But good work does not always mean a “good job,” of course, and in fact there are many employers who sell underpaying and in some case [...]

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The Detroit News is reporting that the higher than expected offers from GM will likely entice as many as 15,000 GM workers into early retirement. Read more here.

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A report in Bloomberg.com says that Ford buyouts will eliminate as many as 9,000 jobs. We’ve reported on the Ford buyouts a few weeks ago. The latest report puts an estimate on the number of jobs that will be lost. That number represents 12-14% of Ford’s North American workforce. The full article is here.
Meanwhile, [...]

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Union workers in Detroit picketed a midtown apartment construction site this week, protesting that the contractor hasn’t hired a proper quota of local workers to complete skilled-trades work. The protest was 250 strong at one point.
Barabas Shabazz, of Carpenters Local 687 said that city policy dictates that at least 50% of skilled-trades workers on any [...]

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The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Ford is in the process of implementing richer buyouts for early retirement packages offered to skilled laborers and production workers. The news has a bad side, too, of course, in that it indicates that the company is intent on ‘asking’ more staff to leave the company.
This has been [...]

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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has settled a lawsuit against the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Ford Motor Company and two related companies. Ford and its co-defendants will pay $1.6 million in the settlement of a racial discrimination lawsuit over a written test that determined the eligibility for a skilled trades apprenticeship program. [...]

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Ray Kurzweil is a noted futurist who has written recently about how our increasingly rapid rate of progress and change will affect trade unions in the coming years. The web will lead to an increased decentralization of unions and these unions will be driven by technological change (not opposed to it, as some unions have [...]

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While the news at General Motors does not seem so good these days, 64% of skilled trades (and 87% of production workers) workers at Ford have voted to ratify the new contract between the auto giant and the United Auto Workers union. The new labor agreement promises to keep several factories in exchange for a [...]

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