I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The rank and file of the UAW firmly rejected a set of contract changes negotiated by union leaders with Ford Motor Company. The Ford auto workers were asked to accept similar concessions to those accepted earlier this year by GM and Chrysler workers, but refused to do so. The Detroit News reports:
Though UAW voting will not be completed nationwide until Sunday, enough plants now have rejected the deal to make it virtually impossible for the agreement to win enough votes for approval.
“I think it’s over,” said Gary Walkowicz, one of union dissidents who has led the opposition to ratification. “People are saying ‘No more.’ We’ve had enough concessions already. We’ve given up enough already.”…
UAW members at Ford have been angered by language that limits the union’s right to strike over pay and benefit increases in the next round of national contract talks in 2011.
But the UAW members at GM and Chrysler voted for identical language during bankruptcy proceedings for those two companies earlier this year. Clearly the fact that Ford is doing much better financially than those companies had a big influence on the vote. But doing better than GM and Chrysler is not the same as doing good.
Yes, Ford has avoided bankruptcy and even managed to post a quarterly profit in the 2nd quarter of 2009. But they are still stuck with billions of dollars in debt that their competitors managed to rid themselves of during bankruptcy proceedings. And a yearly profit isn’t expected even for Ford for at least two more years, especially if domestic auto sales stay down around the 10 million per year mark as expected.
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