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End of the Line for Pontiac Assembly Plant

This year, thousands of Michigan families are losing their jobs with the Big Three automakers and their suppliers. On Tuesday alone, Pontiac Assembly Center, the last assembly line in the scrappy capital seat of Oakland County, built its last truck. It is one of seven factories that General Motors expects to close in Michigan by late next year.

Once anchoring a complex where more than 14,000 people worked, Pontiac Assembly’s line is the last of dozens that once included Pontiac Motors, Fisher Body, Pontiac Truck & Bus and others in the community since the early 1900s.

He truly is the spirit of Detroit

Music Videos – Kid Rock – American Badass (Uncensored)

Michigan Unemployment Up to New Record 15.2%

Michigan’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June rose one and one-tenth percentage points to 15.2 percent, according to data released Wednesday by the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth.

The total number of unemployed in the state reached 740,000 in June, the highest monthly total in Michigan’s current official series dating back to 1976. June’s unemployment rate was highest for the state since May 1983.

MI Will Lose Another 300K Jobs This Year

Michigan’s long series of job losses will cease in 2010, marking a 10-year slide that will have cost the state 950,000 jobs, or 20 percent of its work force, according to a mid-year forecast by a two influential University of Michigan economists.

But job losses remain fierce until then.

The state will lose about 311,000 jobs this year — the most in a single year since at least the 1950s. Non-manufacturing jobs, 71 percent of the state’s labor market, will account for more than half of the job losses this year, the report predicts.

In a refreshing change, the Big Mitten wins

Two industrial icons, one of them partially crippled, shined on Michigan today. Bankrupt General Motors Corp. said it would locate its new small car plant at Orion Township, a move that will save a few thousand manufacturing jobs and keep an endangered stamping facility in Pontiac alive — even at the cost of steep local tax abatements.

And General Electric Co. says it will open a next-generation high-tech facility in Van Buren Township and create up to 1,200 new jobs, many of them paying $100,000 a year or more. The GE gambit holds greater symbolic importance, mainly because its proposed location lends credibility and heft to a planned “Aerotropolis” along the I-94 corridor between Willow Run and Detroit Metropolitan airports. Even North Carolina’s vaunted Research Triangle languished for years until a major corporate player — IBM? — became the kind of lead anchor tenant that wooed others.

The announcements are badly needed wins for beleaguered Michigan, its strained tax base and its embattled governor, Jennifer Granholm, holder of the worst economic record of any sitting governor in the nation. After months of nothing but bad news, GM and GE today delivered the industrial equivalent of manna from heaven — or evidence of the invisible hand of President Barack Obama’s auto task force and Treasury Department working a little magic.

Ford to Get Retooling Loans

Ford Motor Co. will today become the first Detroit automaker to receive loans from the U.S. Department of Energy to help cover the cost of developing and building more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, according to people familiar with the decision.

In its application to the Energy Department, Ford said it would use the money to help cover the cost of retooling some of its U.S. truck plants to produce small cars from Europe.

That would include the planned conversion of the former Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, MI.

Cash For Clunkers Bill Approved by Congress

The Senate approved a $1 billion program yesterday to give vouchers to consumers who trade in their gas-guzzling clunkers for more fuel-efficient models — a move that dealers hope will revive slumping auto sales.

Congressional leaders attached the legislation to a $106 billion spending bill to fund troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The spending bill passed by a 91 to 5 vote but not before some Republican lawmakers unsuccessfully sought to strip the measure from the bill.

Dealers, unions, trade groups and automakers have been lobbying for months for the legislation in hopes that it would stop the streak of dismal U.S. auto sales.

“The simple fact is that we need to get Americans into car showrooms, and this is the bill that will do it,” Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.), a co-sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement.

Consumers would be able to start using the $4,500 vouchers as soon as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalizes the rules — a process that must conclude within 30 days of the president’s approval.