Free Republic

AP — About 200 women ages 18-22 from across Africa have been recruited to work in a factory alongside Russian vocational students assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine. In interviews with The Associated Press, some of the women said they were misled that it would be a work-study program, describing long hours under constant surveillance, broken promises about wages and areas of study, and working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. The AP analyzed satellite images of the complex in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan and its leaked internal documents, spoke to...

In 61 years on this earth, I have never needed an oscillating multitool until now. But I’m working on a project that requires one (for cutting away a couple inches of baseboard on either side of a door, to accommodate door replacement and new casing). So, I headed to our local Walmart. I will probably only use it for this project and never need it again, so I didn’t need to spend much. I found four options: a $20 multitool, a $35 model, a $45 model, and a $70 model. Different brands, different power levels, probably different quality levels, but...

Last year, production at American factories increased — and so did the production of factories themselves. According to data from the Census Bureau released last week, construction spending by US manufacturers more than doubled over the past year. For April 2023, the annual rate reached nearly $190 billion compared with $90 billion in June 2022, with manufacturing accounting for around 13% of non-government construction. The US government has offered billions of dollars in subsidies for the production of electric vehicles and solar panels to compete with countries such as China and to fortify US leadership in sectors including clean energy....

U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday that the fight against climate change will only succeed if people around the world take on a wartime footing and accelerate action to curb carbon emissions. When asked if the world will meet the shared goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 Celsius by 2032, he said that target won’t be met given the current amount of effort being made. "We can’t hit 1.5," he said. "We’re not on track to do it now, and it’s not clear, absolutely clear that we will...

Incentives and free money from the Inflation Reduction Act has triggered an investment boom to build more electric vehicles...The auto industry has earmarked billions of dollars for EV projects resulting in the Biggest Auto-Factory Building Boom in DecadesThe U.S. auto industry is entering one of its biggest factory-building booms in years, a surge of spending largely driven by the shift to electric vehicles and new federal subsidies aimed at boosting U.S. battery manufacturing. The 11-month total adds to the $37 billion in new auto-factory spending committed in 2021, when a number of new projects were revealed in states such as...

This isn’t the first time PJ Media has reported on the sad fates of the human beings trafficked into our country by cynical globalist-socialists, and it won’t be the last. Still, it’s particularly disheartening when minor children, placed in peril by the Biden administration’s extralegal immigration and national transformation machine, are taken advantage of. To its credit, Reuters has been conducting real journalistic investigations into the growing problem of illegal child labor at U.S. factories. The news outlet conducted hundreds of interviews and documented several cases of third-world labor abuse. On Friday, Reuters reported on underage illegal aliens staffing auto...

Up to 60 per cent of factories in the UK are now facing possible closure over a massive surge in their energy bills, a manufacturers’ body in the country has warned. Six in ten UK factories are now facing the possibility of winding up their operations over the rising cost of energy bills in the country, a group tasked with representing manufacturers, Make UK, has claimed.

China's economy is finally getting some good news: Its big factories are staging a recovery as a power crunch that held back production starts to ease because of a big jump in coal supply. A government survey of manufacturing activity increased to 50.1 in November from 49.2 in October, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday. It was the first reading above 50 — indicating expansion rather than contraction — in three months. It was also the first time since March that the index increased over the prior month. Beijing on Tuesday attributed the...

The CCP’s recent policies to encourage the birth of a third child, crack down on private tutoring, and train skilled workers have all been attributed to the CCP’s recognition of a looming crisis in China’s manufacturing sector, some say.A key factor in encouraging childbirth involves the CCP’s Ministry of Education which has set up an agency to supervise after-school education, according to a circular released on June 9. The agency is responsible for the management of after-school education for primary and secondary school students and even kindergarten children. It sets standards and supervises the establishment of institutions, training content, training...

China has constructed a vast string of factories inside the walls of Xinjiang mass internment camps, and Chinese authorities are forcing thousands of Muslim minorities to work in cotton fields, according to two recent investigations. Why it matters: Xinjiang products are deeply integrated into lucrative supply chains around the world. The Chinese Communist Party's official embrace of coerced labor will force Western governments and institutions to choose between pleasing business leaders or enforcing universal human rights values. Details: In the past three years, the Chinese government has forced hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang to...

Whirlpool Corporation Manufacturing Plant Clyde, Ohio 3:31 P.M. EDT  THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  Please.  Thank you very much.  It’s a great honor to be here.  And thank you, Dan.  I’m thrilled to be in the great state of Ohio.  You were very good to me, but I’ve been very good to you.  (Applause.)  I’ve been very good to you.  We’ve been good to each other.  With the incredible men and women of Whirlpool, the largest washing machine factory anywhere in the world.Every day, 20,000 gleaming new machines coming rolling off that beautiful assembly line — I just got to...

A large number of export-oriented Chinese factories were shuttered recently after they didn’t have enough orders to fill. Some home appliance manufacturers also announced that they laid off employees because of a lack of export and domestic demand due to the pandemic. As the outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, became severe in January, much of China was placed under lockdown and factories halted production for more than a month. In February, Beijing encouraged companies to resume operations as it grew concerned about an economic slowdown. But Chinese companies were worried that the...

The first-ever highway partially made of reclaimed plastic was inaugurated in Mexico on Nov. 13. The 2.5-mile stretch of highway in the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico used 1.7 tons of recycled plastic, or the equivalent of 425,000 plastic packaging units, according to Dow Plastics Technology Mexico. "The advantage of using recycled plastic products is that they can be used on all types of highways, not only in high-performance products, which can extend the life span of any paved road," Paula Sans, Dow Mexico's director of packaging and specialty plastics, said in a release. The newly paved stretch of...

As a Catholic who works in the trade association profession in the auto industry it was unsettling to hear President Obama claim that he saved the auto industry. President Obama closed over 2,200 auto dealerships, which caused the losses of decades old family-owned businesses and over 120,000 jobs they provided. The closures were allowed to happen under the false notion that auto dealerships were an expense on their auto maker. The President ignored the fact that auto dealers are not an expense to automakers. Auto makers own none of what you see at auto dealerships. Auto dealers own all their...

Counting blocks, counting heads: The Democratic Party has long made it clear that their commitment to their voting blocks is based on two things: giving them goodies and increasing their numbers. Now, there’s nothing new about the former. The modern Democrat is a believer in wealth redistribution – in a zero-sum game in which the government allocates the portions. The Democrat campaigns on his promise to distribute whatever the government has to give – be it tax dollars, borrowed dollars, or printed dollars – in whatever form is desired – entitlement checks, college grants, mortgage forgiveness. He then promises to...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region plummeted in August, falling to the lowest level since March 2009 and casting more doubts on the strength of the economic recovery, a survey showed on Thursday. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index dropped to minus 30.7 from positive 3.2 the month before and was far below economists' expectations for positive 3.7, according to a Reuters poll. It missed the poll's lowest forecast for minus 10.0. It was the biggest month-over-month drop since October 2008, during the heart of the credit crisis.

Thousands of power plants, manufacturing plants, paper mills, refineries, chemical plants, schools and hospitals use boilers at their facilities. Literally millions of jobs rely on affordable energy from these facilities, and those jobs are put at risk if those boilers can no longer be installed and run in a cost effective manner.

Toyota just announced it will shut down all of its North American factories due to shortages of parts from Japan. This is a temporary shutdown, which will affect about 25,000 workers. The length of the shutdown is unknown and depends on how fast Japanese parts factories can get back in operation, spokesman Mike Gross told the AP. Toyota gets about 15 percent of its parts from Japan. Last month GM's Shreveport plant was shutdown temporarily due to troubles in Japan.

America is on its way to becoming the world's first truly post-industrial nation. Factory jobs have been shed by the thousands and cities that once relied on industry have been shattered. Of course this trend has been going on for the past forty years or so. Only recently it has been getting worse. Click here to see the biggest American factory closings of the past 2 years

Productivity gains mean many low-skilled workers are shut out The U.S. manufacturing sector is roaring back after the worst recession in generations. So why aren’t factory jobs coming back as quickly? One big reason: Business executives like Drew Greenblatt, owner of Baltimore-based Marlin Steel Wire Products, have figured out how to make more widgets with the same number of workers. To do so, he's had to upgrade the skills — and wages — of his employees. But his profits are bigger than ever.