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EuroWire – November 2008
The reactivated plant will build about 215,000 engines a year and employ some
500 people. Production could grow, the Canadian government said, to a level that
would “create or sustain” 757 jobs.
Elsewhere in automotive . . .
General Motors has said it will spend $500 million on production of a compact car
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that is a critical element in its effort to return to profitability. Some $350 million
of that will go toward retooling the Detroit auto giant’s Lordstown plant, in Ohio,
to turn out the new car. Lordstown opened 42 years ago and is the highest-volume
plant in the world with a single assembly line.
Responding to a collapsing market for big trucks and sport utility vehicles, GM is
closing four North American truck plants and resting its hopes on the Cruze, which
promises to go 46 miles on a gallon of gasoline. The new compact was introduced
at the Paris Motor Show in October. It will go on sale in Europe and Asia in 2009,
a year before its North American debut.
Energy
‘American small businesses are not prepared
for power outages’
According to the results of a recent survey commissioned by a unit of Emerson Electric
Co (St Louis, Missouri), the small business owners of the US will be very much in the
dark if the lights go out. Emerson Network Power released its findings in conjunction
with the fifth anniversary of the Great Blackout, which began on 14
th
August, 2003.
The largest power outage in North American history left 50 million people in the
North-eastern United States and Canada in the dark – some for days – and cost the
economy an estimated $6 billion in productivity.
Statistics published by Emerson in August 2008 include these:
of the small business decision-makers surveyed, 79% experienced at least one
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power outage in 2007
of the small businesses that experienced outages in 2007, 42% had to close down
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during the longest spells without power
some 67% of respondents expected to experience outages again over the next
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12 months
while small business owners consider power outages a greater threat than fire,
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weather damage, theft, employee turnover, and government regulation, only 39%
of them have back-up power systems, leaving 61% vulnerable to the negative
business impacts of outages
“Keeping the lights on, the computers running, and employees working during a
power outage is important for any business, but particularly for small businesses,” said
Ed Feeney, head of the Emerson Network Power systems business, which provides
back-up power technologies. “Their margin for error is thinner and the competition’s
tighter, so even a brief outage can do significant harm.”
An independent authority – Steve Strauss, nationally syndicated business columnist
and author of The Small Business Bible – commented, “Emerson’s survey findings
are alarming, considering that more than 99% of all American businesses are small
businesses, with these companies generating 45% of the total US payroll.
It is critical that small enterprises have a business-continuity plan that includes back-up
power systems to keep the business running when the main power source goes down.”
Dorothy Fabian
USA Editor