Word: fording
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fifth time in two weeks, the black trainee had failed to show up at his job at the Ford Motor Co. plant near South Africa's industrial capital of Port Elizabeth. He had asked for two hours off to answer a summons from the police, but failed to return to work. When a white foreman cautioned Thozamile Botha, 30, an intense former schoolteacher turned black activist who had worked for Ford for less than twelve months, to improve his attendance, Botha snapped, "Why don't you fire me?" He then stalked angrily out of the plant...
That incident last month provoked a strike by 700 skilled black workers at two Ford plants that produce engines and assemble cars. They were soon joined by 800 other black employees of nearby paper and tire factories. The walkout, which continues, stems from no ordinary labor-management dispute. Ford, whose 5,000 employees in South Africa include 1,200 blacks, has been a leader in introducing nondiscriminatory policies like those prescribed in the corporate code of conduct drawn up by U.S. Civil Rights Leader Leon Sullivan. Ford was among the first firms to recognize black unions. Black anti-apartheid organizers...
...Port Elizabeth and Soweto, the black township outside Johannesburg, are now focusing on factory workers. Because black labor is essential to South Africa's economy, strikes by blacks constitute a potentially powerful weapon. Though Thozamile Botha, who heads the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organization (PEBCO), concedes that Ford is perhaps the "best" employer of blacks in the country, he has been prodding its management to respond to a long list of demands. He has attacked Ford's sponsorship of an all-white rugby team and special privileges that start new white employees...
Cambridge's history includes much more than the University. Once it was a city of towering plants and coughing smokestacks--"we had a Ford plant cranking out Model T's on Memorial Drive," William Dickerson, a member of the Celebrations Committee, recalled...
Surveying the skyline of Calgary, where 29 huge construction cranes are climbing atop new office towers, Canadian Novelist Mordecai Richler observed: "That's going to be a helluva city when they get it uncrated." In Edmonton, 180 miles to the north, Ford has sold hundreds more Thunderbirds than usual this year. Boasts Dealer Ryan Taylor: "They can't give those gas guzzlers away south of the border, but they are going like crazy up here." Around the town of Medicine Hat, where 1,700 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the past year, Canadian, British...