Factory Workers

A plane crashed into the side of a tire factory in southern Ecuador, killing five of the 14 people aboard, police said. Factory workers were having lunch in another area of the building when the plane hit and none were injured, witnesses said in Cuenca.

Leading aluminum wheel maker Superior Industries International Inc. said Wednesday that it would fire 375 employees, or nearly 6% of its workforce, as it tried to steer the company in a new direction. The layoff affects more than half of the 635 manufacturing workers at its Van Nuys plant and comes amid a difficult time for the industry, which has been beset by increased competition and a slowdown in production by U.S. automakers.

The plant that makes 2,000-pound "bunker buster" penetration bombs has stopped production for a second time after workers developed anemia because of TNT exposure, officials said Wednesday. Manufacture of the weapons -- heavily used in the Iraq war -- was stopped Feb. 8 after resuming weeks before following a lengthy production halt, said Mark Hughes, spokesman for the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant.

For the workers rolling maduros in a small, sultry Tampa cigar factory, having the snow-bound romance of "Anna Karenina" read aloud to them by a suave young man in a white suit "is like having a fan or an icebox by your side to relieve the heat," as one character in Nilo Cruz's "Anna in the Tropics" puts it.

Like other factories in this region, Precision Custom Components is beginning to see a comeback in its business. Three weeks ago, it was offered a $2-million contract to build equipment for a nuclear power plant. The metal fabricator desperately wanted the job. But it couldn't find the 25 machinists and welders it needed, so it turned down the contract. "After three years of really ugly times, finding the humans is not an easy task," Chief Executive Gary Butler said.

A court in southern China has sentenced five shoe factory workers to as many as 3 1/2 years in prison after a strike in April, a court official and labor rights group said. The five were among 40 arrested after thousands went on strike in Dongguan -- an export manufacturing zone near Hong Kong -- to protest wages and working conditions, the New York-based China Labor Watch group reported.

Boeing Co. has reached agreements on new contracts with union locals representing almost 5,000 workers at plants in California and Oklahoma, including the company's Long Beach aircraft factory. Long Beach workers, who build commercial passenger jets and C-17 military cargo planes, ignored their leadership's recommendation and voted Sunday to approve a new three-year pact that provides wage increases but also calls on them to pay more of their own medical insurance costs.

A U.S. manufacturing index unexpectedly rose last month as production increased and more factories added workers than at any time since Ronald Reagan was president. "Plain and simple, this report tells us that the manufacturing sector is smoking," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital in Greenwich, Conn. "The breadth of the expansion as well as its speed is breathtaking." The Institute for Supply Management said Thursday that its factory index for March rose to 62.

A factory worker who claimed his lungs were ruined as a result of mixing flavoring oils used in microwave popcorn was awarded $20 million by a jury. Eric Peoples was the first of 30 former workers at the Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. plant in Jasper to have his suit heard against the two makers of the butter flavoring. After a morning of closing arguments, the jury deliberated for a little more than three hours before returning its verdict.

Citing troubles due to the discovery of mad cow disease in Washington state, Swift & Co. said Friday that it would suspend its second shift next week at two meatpacking plants. A total of 2,100 employees will be affected at the plants in Grand Island and Greeley, Colo., said Jim Herlihy, a spokesman for Swift, the nation's third-largest beef and pork processor. Herlihy said the suspension would begin Monday, and employees would return to work Feb. 23.