Manufacturing
kkrisberg | April 8, 2017At the Center for Public Integrity, Talia Buford and Maryam Jameel investigate federal contractors that receive billions in public funds despite committing wage violations against their workers. In analyzing Department of Labor data on more than 1,100 egregious violators, the reporters found that federal agencies modified or granted contracts totaling $18 billion to 68 contractors with proven wage violations. The Department of Defense contracted with the most wage violators.
Under Obama, labor officials had attempted to address the problem with the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which…
kkrisberg | February 21, 2017At Reveal, Jennifer Gollan reports on how the Navy and other federal agencies give lucrative contracts to shipbuilders with troublesome worker safety records. In fact, Gollan reports that since 2008, the Navy and Coast Guard’s seven major shipbuilders have received more than $100 billion in public funds despite serious — and sometimes fatal — safety gaps. She noted that in his first days in office, President Trump announced plans for a massive Navy fleet expansion, which could mean even more workers will be at risk.
Gollan writes:
With extra business comes more risks for workers. But there is…
kkrisberg | August 30, 2016At KCRW (an NPR member station), Karen Foshay reports on occupational injuries among low-wage restaurant workers in California and the retaliatory barriers that often keep them from speaking up. She cited a 2011 Restaurant Opportunities Center survey of Los Angeles restaurant workers that found 42 percent experienced cuts, 43 percent experienced burns and more than half reported working while sick. Foshay writes:
At a recent meeting in Azusa (in eastern Los Angeles County), several workers showed off their appointment cards for clinics like Santa Adelina. Three men lifted their pant legs to…
kkrisberg | January 18, 2016Think about all the objects you use every day that are made with pieces of metal. Before that object got to you, a worker in the metal manufacturing industry used a machine to cut, saw, bend and assemble the metal pieces into the countless products that make our lives easier. But sometimes those machines break. And when they do, a simple and inexpensive procedure helps ensure both worker and machine can return safely to the job.
The procedure is known as lockout/tagout (LOTO) and it’s used to disable machinery and prevent the release of hazardous energy during servicing and repair. In other…
kkrisberg | November 24, 2015Maquiladora workers (manufacturing workers) in Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, are at the center of a growing worker rebellion in border factories, which employ more than 69,000 people, are nearly all foreign-owned, and pay some of the lowest wages along the border, reports David Bacon in The Nation. In fact, manufacturing workers in Juárez typically make 18 percent less than the average manufacturing worker in one of Mexico’s border cities. Bacon reports:
Ali Lopez, a single mother at the planton outside the ADC CommScope factory, describes grinding poverty. “…
As world watches Japan's nuclear plants, damage to manufacturing infrastructure poses chemical risks
egrossman | March 15, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
After posting yesterday's story, I began to learn what a hub of chemical-intensive industry the region of Japan most directly affected by the earthquake an tsunami is. Hit with varying degrees of damage from the earthquake and tsunami are more than a dozen major petrochemical plants, most, according to a March 14 Goldman Sachs memo to investors, built in the 1970s. In addition, numerous factories that manufacture agrochemicals, silicon wafers, semiconductors, photovoltaic cells, and other high-tech items have all suffered damage as have warehouses and shipping container…
grrlscientist | March 26, 2010tags: coins, mint, manufacturing, technology, factory, education, streaming video
This is an interesting video showing how the â¬2 coin is made. This coin consists of two different metals that are squeezed together into one coin. Interestingly, it uses recycled copper -- I wonder how many construction sites have lost their copper piping to thieves who then sold it to recyclers for manufacture into Euros? I also have embedded a second video that discusses the history of coin making as well as describing how less complex coins are made.
Another look at coinmaking (admittedly, not as fancy as…
grrlscientist | March 24, 2010tags: condoms, manufacturing, technology, factory, education, streaming video
Well, now this is an interesting video: how condoms are made. The manufacturing process is actually quite interesting, and my favorite part was stress-testing the condoms. I wonder what the people who work in that factory say when asked at a dinner party what they do for a living?
razib | February 28, 2010And more productive. FiveThirtyEight has a nice meme-buster post, US Manufacturing Is Not Dead. This was known to me, but Tom Schaller has all the charts put together nice.
Here's industrial output:
The labor force engaged in producing durable goods:
And per hour productivity:
The manufacturing sector is still robust, it is simply manufacturing jobs which are not.