Workers at a new battery plant being built by Ford will be paid near-poverty wages, according to a document obtained by the Detroit News. The plant is to be built in Marshall, Michigan, near Battle Creek, in partnership with Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL).
The document submitted to the Michigan legislature said about three-quarters of the plant’s projected 2,500 employees, 1,900 workers, would receive pay in the range of $41,600 annually, or about $20 an hour. The $20 an hour would apparently include the expected benefits package, meaning the actual hourly wage would be even lower. The wage needed to provide basic necessities in Calhoun County is $19.69 an hour, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.
The median household income in Calhoun County is $53,286, so the net impact of the new jobs would actually be to lower median income in the area.
The report comes as company says it will allow for union recognition at the plant for the United Auto Workers through an expedited process known as card check, which requires a majority of plant employees to turn in a signed authorization card rather than holding an election. This was obviously a quid pro quo, with the union agreeing to impose the starvation wage scale decided on by Ford in exchange for gaining the right to collect dues from the battery plant workers.
Here we fall into the trap of treating this all as serious when it isn’t. It’s just a more-complicated form of complaining about Democrats and treating them as unacceptable and un-American. Greene’s real frustration isn’t that Democrats are being too woke to her or whatever, it’s that there are Democrats at all. That America has a system of government in which we collectively agree to governance based on elections and that, in 2020, Greene’s party lost.
Greene would, in fact, love an America without New York or California or Illinois. She would love to live in a country made up only of like-minded people; that “everyone she talks to says this” about “national divorce” indicates that she already surrounds herself with sympathetic people. Why not make a country of them?
However Hannity might try to paper over it, Greene disagrees with the way in which America is a country based on collective decision-making and how those decisions are ones every American might sometimes dislike. Whatever she wants to call it or however Fox News frames it, she wants to change America into something else.
The difference between that and advocating secession is subtle.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Wednesday:
The PMF leadership at various times claimed and rejected the affiliation of Saraya al-Salam, the large and powerful militia loyal to Sadr, which has influence in Basra and other parts of Iraq’s south as well as a strong presence in Baghdad. But the tenuous association between the PMF and Saraya al-Salam, which never included an operational integration of the Sadrists into the PMF, was often confrontational with competition over legal and illegal economic rents and vote banks.
Both the PMF and Saraya al-Salam entrenched themselves in and took over Iraq’s many formal and illegal economies, from the construction contracts that followed the devastation of war; the service sector; and the scrap metal trade to generalized extortion; customs evasion; and oil, drug, and other contraband trafficking.
“This is a visit of solidarity,” Mr Guterres said in a briefing with Mr Hussein after arriving at Baghdad International Airport.
“A solidarity with the people and the democratic institutions of Iraq and a solidarity that means that the United Nations is totally committed to support the consolidation of the institutions in this country.”
He said he was confident that “Iraqis will be able to overcome the difficulties and challenges they still face through an open and inclusive dialogue”.
Mr Hussein described the visit as important, praising the relations and co-operation with the UN special mission to Iraq and UN.
“We always thank the secretary general for his support to the political process and democracy in Iraq,” Mr Hussein said.
“People used to respect others even if they had different views. But not anymore. Our country is gone,” she concluded. Last week, Greene called for a “national divorce” between blue and red states.
The last time the U.S. had such a division, it resulted in a 4 year civil war. The war killed over a million Americans, including soldiers, non-combatant civilians, and slaves.
In response to Greene’s tweet, [David] Hogg, now age 22, wrote a tweet directly tagging her Twitter screen name.
“@mtgreenee Man that sucks. I was attacked and screamed at in 2018 by an insane woman named Marjorie Taylor Greene. She had no respect for the privacy of me as an 18 year old school shooting survivor or my staff. She was self righteous, insane, and completely out of control,” Hogg wrote.
The use of defense contractors stretches back to the American Revolution. During that war, the Continental Army was inexperienced and ill-equipped, so contractors provided food, clothing, horses, wagons, weapons, and even scouting services. Today, the Department of Defense still requires the help of defense contractors for the U.S. military.
A defense contractor is a business organization or individual who provides products or services to a government’s military or intelligence department. These products and services can include technical support, training, weaponry, aircrafts, vehicles, communications support, logistics, and electrical systems.
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