Word: perlis
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...best relations with the UAW. But last fall workers at Ford voted down contract changes aimed at erasing the gap in labor rates that had opened up with key competitors, who got additional concessions as they went through bankruptcy. GM's labor costs after bankruptcy have fallen from $72 per hour to about $50 per hour under pressure from the Treasury. Ford's hover around $55 per hour after recent adjustments, and the gap is a top issue for Ford's management. (See GM's great hopes...
...resolved, according to a Ford spokeswoman. But union members say the tension remains. Ford workers also protested plans to give merit-pay increases (which go against the collective-bargaining ethos). Instead, Ford agreed that workers would receive a share of the company's 2009 profits. The payments average $250 per employee for each of Ford's 41,000 workers. A year ago, the union might have been willing to discuss dropping the profit-sharing to protect jobs, but this time it stuck to the letter of the contract...
...helps that Qatar sits on a massive natural gas field. The country is the world's third largest producer of natural gas, behind Russia and Iran and, with a population of just 1.5 million, has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. That wealth has allowed Qatar's rulers to chart a pragmatic and flexible foreign policy that has them making friendly with Iran and Syria while hosting American military forces. Now the country wants to become a regional cultural and media hub. Last year Qatar hosted a version of the Tribeca Film Festival, while private investors...
...monster snowstorms blanketed the northeastern U.S. in a single week, temporarily shutting down the federal government (at a cost of $100 million per day) and closing schools up and down the East Coast. Airlines canceled thousands of flights, while thousands of homes in Washington--where winds reached up to 40 m.p.h. (55 km/h)--were left without power. At least 750 D.C. workers were dispatched to clear accumulations that topped 3 ft. (1 m) in some areas; some reported breakdowns of their cleanup equipment, which was unaccustomed to such strenuous...
...years, Americans ranked crime at or near the top of their list of urgent issues. Every politician, from alderman to President, was expected to have a crime-fighting agenda, yet many experts despaired of solutions. By 1991, the murder rate in the U.S. reached a near record 9.8 per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, criminologists began to theorize that a looming generation of so-called superpredators would soon make things even worse. (See the top 10 crime stories...