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Made in America

Here’s a rare spot of good news. A Bloomington, Indiana GE plant once slated for closure will now be the site of investment in energy-efficient refrigerators:

The factory, which employs 585 members of Local 2249, will hire 200 more workers, part of a $93 million facility upgrade to add a new line of side-by-side refrigerators that will incorporate “green” insulation and other components.

Bloomington Local 2249 Business Manager Carven Thomas said the news elated members:

In 2008, we were on that obituary list. It was us. I hope this example will become a blueprint for company-labor relations and help reinvent manufacturing in the United States.

On Monday, GE shut down the plant temporarily to gather workers as well as local and state officials to share the news that instead of closing, selling, or spinning off the plant, the company was in fact making a major investment in the facility, adding the new line in Bloomington and bringing some jobs back to the United States from Mexico. IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill and Sixth District Vice President Lonnie Stephenson were in Bloomington for the announcement.

The Bloomington plant is among four that will benefit from the $432 million investment in “cool refrigeration” technology. The move will create 500 new green jobs by 2014 and brings GE’s total U.S. investment in appliance manufacturing announced since 2009 to more than $1 billion and jobs created to 1,300.

A company release says the factories will use a top-to-bottom redesign process that maximizes efficiency known as “lean” manufacturing. Most of the new units will be smart grid-enabled to save energy and cut costs. They’ll use refrigeration insulation that dramatically cuts greenhouse gas emissions. And the plants themselves will reduce carbon emissions 90 percent, GE says.

Of course this is just one of many, many similar steps GE and other corporations need to make, but it’s heartening nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO blog covers a call for more investment in American jobs:

By rebuilding our nation’s transportation infrastructure, we could create 3.7 million jobs, 600,000 alone in manufacturing, according to a new action plan released today by the Apollo Alliance.

The Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) calls for an investment of $40 billion a year over the next six years to modernize and shore up our nation’s roads, bridges, mass transportation and advanced vehicles. The plan was developed by a bipartisan group of union members, business owners, environmental and community activists and political leaders.

For decades, the United States has all but ignored mass transit. In fact, since 2005, U.S. companies and governments have spent more than $10 billion to purchase rail cars, tracks and other mass transit equipment overseas, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard said during a telephone press conference today. That $10 billion is money that should have been spent here.

Today, existing U.S. public transit bus, rail vehicle and clean truck supply chains support some 40,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs. There are more than 375 existing companies that could scale up to meet expanded demand if Congress is willing to put TMAP into action, Gerard says.

The potential is there. Now we need a government that will follow through with funding and incentives.

Tags: green jobs, Jobs, outsourcing