Factories

Deric Golden has what he calls his dream job, fixing small flaws on the sedans being churned out at the Hyundai factory here. So when two organizers from the United Auto Workers knocked on his apartment door one day, hoping to get him to sign a union card, he quickly sent them packing. "I told them I didn't work at the plant," said Golden, 29. "I just wasn't interested. " It's the same story in town after town along the southern tier of Auto Alley, a corridor that runs north-south along interstates 75 and 65 from Lexington, Ky., to Montgomery.

The Cheesecake Factory is at once an ostentatious den of dining and decorative excess as well as a homespun throwback to family tradition. Witness the florid murals and French-inspired checked floors, the dozens of cheesecakes in sumptuous flavors such as white chocolate caramel macadamia and the calorie-laden dishes that regularly land the chain on extreme eating lists. But behind the extravagant menu and interior design, there's a classically American story involving an entrepreneurial housewife and a cheesecake tweaked from a newspaper recipe.

An investigation into the Chinese factories that produce Apple products found “significant issues with working conditions," according to a report released by a labor watchdog group. The Fair Labor Assn. said Thursday that it had conducted a thorough inspection of three factories in China operated by Foxconn, a major supplier, and had secured “groundbreaking commitments” that will reduce working hours, improve health and safety conditions and “establish a genuine voice for workers.” The group said it would continue to monitor the factories.

BEIJING - There was a loud bang, survivors said. Then the lights went out, and fire quickly engulfed a poultry plant in northeastern China, killing at least 119 workers who were trapped inside behind locked doors. The fire on Monday, perhaps the deadliest in China's poultry industry, erupted just after 6 a.m. in Jilin province's Mishazi township. Authorities said the explosion was caused by leakage in tanks of ammonia, which is used in the poultry industry as a coolant. At least 54 people were injured in the explosion and subsequent blaze.

Apple Inc.'s chief executive responded to a wave of negative attention to conditions at overseas factories that make its products, saying the insinuation that Apple doesn't care about the welfare of its workers is "offensive. " "Unfortunately, some people are questioning Apple's values today," Tim Cook wrote in an e-mail to Apple employees. "Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. " A series of articles in the New York Times has brought new focus on Apple's highly profitable production strategy, which relies heavily on Chinese workers who live in dormlike factories and spend many hours assembling devices.

Apple has responded to a wave of criticism of its labor practices in China by joining an industry-funded labor monitoring organization that will conduct extensive audits of factories run by Apple's Chinese manufacturing partners.  The Fair Labor Assn. audits would including the vast Foxconn facilities in Shenzhen and Chengdu that employ hundreds of thousands of workers, and which have been the locus of a number of worker safety problems in recent years. Last May, a fire at one of the plants killed four and injured nearly 20 workers, and in 2010, 13 Foxconn employees jumped to their deaths from factory rooftops.

Improbable as it seems, the brightest spot so far in the nation's spotty economic recovery is a sector long considered all but dead -- good-old-fashioned manufacturing. Factories are churning. Exports are up. Even though jobs are the bleakest aspect of the overall economy these days, factory payrolls have turned positive. "We could have a renaissance here," said Ron Bloom, President Obama's manufacturing czar. "Indeed," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke declared late last month, "manufacturing has been leading the recovery so far."

While most of the country will head routinely to work Friday, workers at General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group will get the day off. Why? It's the start of deer-hunting season, a peculiar benefits quirk stemming from collective bargaining, corporate needs and Midwestern outdoors culture. During contract negotiations in the late 1990s, the automakers agreed to make Veterans Day a paid day off - but with a catch. The United Auto Workers didn't necessarily want to celebrate Veterans Day. Rather, its members wanted a flexible day off in November about the time hunting season starts.

A sweeping investigation into three Chinese factories that produce Apple Inc. products found "significant issues" with working conditions, including excessive overtime and health and safety risks. An industry-funded labor watchdog group, the Fair Labor Assn., said Thursday that it had conducted a thorough inspection of the factories operated by Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple and other tech companies. The group said it had secured "groundbreaking commitments" that will reduce working hours, improve conditions and establish a voice for workers.

Left-wing rebels fighting to topple the Sri Lanka government destroyed five processing factories in the Indian ocean island's central tea-growing region last week and damaged five more.

NEW DELHI - The disaster caused shocking loss of life among young, mostly female garment workers, awoke the conscience of a nation, spotlighted dismal working conditions and spurred loud calls for construction and labor reform. So far, that description could apply equally to the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Bangladesh three weeks ago and to the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York in 1911. The Triangle fire would prove a turning point in safeguarding American workers after 146 mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrants died, including many who jumped to their deaths because they were trapped behind locked doors.

NEW DELHI - Thousands gathered Tuesday in the rubble of the collapsed Rana Plaza garment factory complex in Bangladesh to pray for the 1,127 people who died in the world's worst apparel industry disaster. Pictures taken at the Islamic prayer ceremony on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital, showed a rescue worker in yellow headgear affixing a red flag in the ruins. Army personnel, who have been working around the clock for almost three weeks, ended their cleanup and recovery operation early Tuesday, handing responsibility to civil authorities.

NEW DELHI, India - The Bangladesh army announced Monday it would end its search for bodies in the rubble of a garment factory complex that collapsed nearly three weeks ago in a suburb of the capital, Dhaka. Saying they believe they have found all the corpses, authorities placed the final death toll at or close to 1,127, making it the worst disaster in the history of the global apparel industry. The eight-story Rana Plaza collapsed April 24th just before 9 a.m., leading to weeks of frantic rescue efforts as anguished relatives watched and waited under the hot sun. The disaster has focused global attention on the desperate conditions for workers in Bangladesh making clothes for bargain-hungry Western consumers.

NEW DELHI - In a development described as miraculous, a woman trapped in rubble for 17 days emerged alive Friday from the remains of a building that pancaked just outside Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Speaking from her hospital bed, the survivor, a seamstress identified with the single name Reshma in local news reports, told a Bangladeshi television station that she stayed alive by eating dried food, which ran out after 15 days, and drinking sparingly from bottles of water she had around her in the wreckage of the Rana Plaza building.

Workers clearing rubble from the scene of the multistory garment factory that collapsed in Bangladesh killing more than 1,000 workers at last count and injuring around 2,000 more found a woman alive and rescued her Friday, 17 days after the tragedy. The Associated Press reported she was found on the second floor; the New York Times said she was found in a Muslim prayer room in the basement of the building, which afforded her oxygen and enough space to stand up. In any event, she was uninjured, an official on the scene said, but taken to a hospital to be examined.

NEW DELHI -- As Bangladesh struggles to improve its dismal industrial safety record after a massive building collapse last month, another garment industry disaster has raised new cries for reform. Shortly before midnight Wednesday, a fire swept through a garment factory in the capital Dhaka, killing eight people including its managing director and a top police official. Initial reports suggested that the fire in the 11-story building was caused by a short circuit on the second floor that spread to the third and fourth floors, where the factory was located.

After years of criticism over its labor practices abroad, Nike Inc. is disclosing for the first time the names and locations of more than 700 factories that produce its sneakers, apparel and other products. Industry experts said the disclosure would make the Beaverton, Ore.-based sneaker giant the first major apparel manufacturer to voluntarily disclose its entire supply chain.

When history teacher Gay Shepard of Mesa View Middle School toured an automobile parts factory recently, she arrived ready to weld new ideas into her eighth-grade lesson plans. Geared with goggles and pen and pad in hand, the Huntington Beach teacher listened closely as the staff of Nippondenso Inc., the company that sponsored the tour, capped engine hoses with metal tops, and tested large and small auto parts with laser micrometers and other high-tech robotics.

The Chinese appetite for luxury automotive brands, including Cadillac, has become so great that General Motors has won government permission to build a $1.3-billion factory near Shanghai, the automaker confirmed Tuesday. The Chinese National Development and Reform Commission signed off on the plant, which will be located in Shanghai's Jinqiao district, GM said in a statement. Construction is to begin in June. GM said the planned production capacity for the factory is 150,000 vehicles.

The deaths of more than 600 garment workers in Bangladesh's Rana Plaza factory collapse April 24 is a tragedy that highlights widespread problems in the global apparel industry. But will it be the spark that finally leads to much-needed global reforms? After disasters like Rana, or the fire at another Bangladeshi garment factory in November that killed 112 people, there is a tendency to play detective, to focus on the culprit, whether it be the owner, corruption or lax laws and missing enforcement.