Tuesday, January 3, 2012

January 3 News Update

The Labor Advocate Blog is now the venue replacing the old Daily Labor News Digest that long appeared on the KC Labor web site. Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central, we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New York Times will be followed with a *. The Times pay wall policy allows free access to only about twenty articles a month.

Will Caterpillar Offshore Canadian Jobs to Muncie, Indiana?
After seven months of “bargaining” that did not budge from demands of more than fifty percent wage cuts and elimination of pensions, Caterpillar locked out 650 CAW members at its Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario New Year’s Eve. EMD, the principal competitor with General Electric (organized by UE in Erie, Pennsylvania) for the North American diesel-electric locomotive market, was a division of General Motors until being sold to private equity in 2005–who in turn resold it for a tidy profit to Caterpillar in 2010. Caterpillar is in the process of cranking up a brand new, nonunion EMD plant in Muncie, Indiana. CAW wages at the London plant were about 35 dollars an hour. The wage rates in Muncie–where the company got tax-payer handouts to open up--range from 12-16 dollars per hour.

A Gathering Storm Over ‘Right to Work’ in Indiana *
Factory output subdued going into 2012
Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes
Obama, Congress begin 2012 in oil pipeline dispute
Settlement Reinstates Branford 4: 'I Felt Like Norma Rae'
Rio Tinto Alcan lockout shrinks Quebec production
British private sector pension 'collapse'
U.S. water, sewer systems tapped out
Storehouses for Solar Energy Can Step In When the Sun Goes Down *

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