SHORTER, AL—Hyundai and Kia supplier Taesung Alabama broke ground Friday on a $6.6 million assembly plant here. Construction should be finished by May, and the plant will create 70 new jobs by 2015.
WASHINGTON—U.S. payrolls rose by 203,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate dropped three-tenths of a percentage point to 7 percent, the lowest level in five years.
DETROIT—GM is investing $24 million in electrical generation equipment that will allow the company to use more landfill gas at its assembly plants in Fort Wayne, IN, and Orion, MI. The new equipment will generate more than 14 megawatts of electricity from landfill gas, saving a combined $10 million in energy costs each year at the facilities.
CHEYENNE, WY—Maverick Ammunition plans to open a new assembly plant here, employing more than 50 people. The facility will produce 1.8 million rounds per week by the second half of 2014.
ROCHESTER, NY—Perseverance and creativity enabled a 75-year old GM assembly plant here to go landfill-free. The journey took four years and included seven attempts to recycle a challenging oily filter sludge generated from a machining operation.
MANCHING, Germany—More than 20,000 workers from European aerospace group EADS took to the streets in Germany last week to protest against restructuring plans they fear could cost thousands of jobs. Protests were held at about 30 sites, from the company’s Airbus factories near Hamburg to its Eurofighter jet assembly plant in Manching in the south.
COLUMBUS, OH—Kerry Ketchem, 62, an automotive engineer, has been sentenced to eight years in prison on three counts of felony theft involving a scheme to steal catalytic converters from an assembly plant.