Some Good News in a Sea of Bad

Remember when all said those GM bail outs were not worth it? Remember when we said give them the money? Well, finally we're seeing some payback, which one sure cannot say about the Bank bail outs. General Motors is now investing $2 billion dollars in the United States, creating 4,000 manufacturing jobs.

GM announced Tuesday that it will invest about $2 billion in U.S. assembly and component plants, "creating or preserving" about 4,000 jobs at 17 plants in eight states.

Toledo is going ballistic with joy.

 

 

The Detroit Free Press is reporting 2,000 of those jobs will go to laid off workers. The bad news for new hires is they start at just $14/hr, not even a living wage in most areas of the country. Additionally, the 4,000 jobs announced adds to the 13,000 U.S. jobs already promised to be kept in the United States.

All good news comes with strings, and GM is announcing most of the $2 billion will be allocated dependent upon local tax incentives. So, here come the States on their race to the bottom trying to get those plants and jobs. Dear States, please put in a clause which says you get your money back if GM moves those jobs to Korea, China, Mexico, Brazil.

GM’s six-speed transmission factory in Toledo is one of the 17 plants in GM’s planned hiring blitz. In Toledo, GM will spend $204 million on updates to retain or create jobs for about 250 workers that will build new eight-speed automatic transmissions, Akerson said. The automaker intends in the coming months to share the names of other factories who are receiving a collective $2 billion in retooling and updates -- dependent on approval of local tax incentives.

Bear in mind GM is shifting jobs overseas, so there is a long way to go to get U.S. multinationals to invest in America, hire Americans, buy American in their supply chain and export finished products.

Still, this is a huge step in the right direction for U.S. workers, especially Detroit, which has been absolutely economically decimated, not only from this recession, but years of NAFTA styled bad trade deals. NAFTA alone has cost the United States 683,900 U.S. jobs.

Below is an exceptional report to show you how Detroit has been absolutely decimated economically.

 

 

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Comments

a small start

Yes, this is good news. Toledo is like mini detroit. BUT, in Lansing Michigan in 1980, there were 28,000 GM employees (not just line workers, remember. Engineers, Accountants, etc., etc.). Today, there are 3500 in the city and another 3500 in a new plant just outside the city limits. Instead of using the hundreds of acres that GM owns in the city that are basically empty parking lots, GM chose to tear up pure untouched farm land to build a new polluting plant to build SUVs. GM had 5 different locations in the city that they could have refurbished to build this new plant and not have to tear up that land and also to revitalize parts of Lansing that are otherwise wastelands of concrete. But thanks to good old tax breaks and some political insider deals, they get to abandon inner city Lansing for its suburbs. Heaven forbid they have to clean up the messes they have made in the city.
I pick Lansing because I am from here. But I only have to travel an hour Northeast to see the disaster that is Flint. Or I can travel to Pennsylvania to see all the steel towns that are decimated by this attitude.