Wind Energy Industry Brings Badly Needed Jobs to Detroit
Wind turbine manufacturer Global Wind Systems announced today that it will be hiring 250 new employees to work in the company’s new wind turbine assembly plant in Novi, Michigan, thirty miles west of Detroit. The news brings a ray of hope for a regional economy struggle under the weight of a sinking auto industry.
In December, Global Wind Systems received $7.3 million in tax credits from the Michigan Economic Growth Authority in December to create 256 direct jobs over six years. Founder and CEO of Global Wind Systems, Chris Long told the Detroit News that he hopes to almost double that number of jobs in just two years.
The current economic slowdown being felt across the country may have hit Detroit before anywhere else in the United States — and it hit hard. By February, Michigan’s unemployment rate topped the 12% mark, the highest in the country and the highest in Michigan since 1984, and there were even reports that you could buy a Home in Detroit for $40.
The problem in Michigan has been compounded (or lead) by the fact that the Big Three are simply not selling as many cars and trucks as they used to. But as waves of massive layoffs and job cuts sweep through the auto industry, there is at least one other industry that just might be able to prosper in Detroit’s economic environment — and that is the wind energy industry.
Fortunately for companies like Global Wind Systems, there is already a labor force in place and well-versed in manufacturing. Of the thousands of applications already received for the Novi plant, CEO Long said ninety percent listed automotive experience.
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April 14th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Wind energy is a perfect fit for Detroit. This is going to be a huge technology for the rest of this century. Detroit has the right skills and plenty of workers available to build wind towers, blades and other components. Tidal, wave power generation, and solar panels might also be a good match.
April 14th, 2009 at 10:41 am
This news will bring hope to millions of people and not just to those 250 or so who’ll be joining. Wish other companies also come up with such productive(to the company and the employees) decisions.
April 14th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Yep! T. Boone Pickens is right! Wind and Natural Gas. We need more companies like this!
April 14th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
very interesting, i would have not even thought of the wind power industry going to detroit unless a buddy at http://www.affluence.org pointed this out to me
April 14th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
That our manufacturing sector has lacked the drive to maintain a leadership position is so sad. From hybrid cars to solar and wind, the US should have taken a more innovative approach to the changing times. Hopefully this will signify just such a shift in focus and a boost to the economy.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Detroit, large crowds of labor, well versed, in fact, molded for generations, in producing the poorly constructed, overly expensive union crap we were forced to buy and drive down the roads with pieces falling off as we went along! Bullshit! These high priced Union infested dope addicts and hoodlums with a sense of entitlement almost as big as their egos will dodge shifts, invent overtime, work slow, call in sick and steal the corporations blind. Crass corruption, drunkenness, drug addiction, all nighters, practiced over the last fifty years, skills at screwing the system will all come into play! These sad, undereducated gangster mentalities are the reason GM and Chrysler went down! They are a product of corrupt vulture capitalism and the cancer of America! They will never compete with the 98 pound, little yellow peasant-women of Asia. They cannot survive on 85 cent and hour wages, live in factory dorms, eat a vegetarian (rice) diet, poop in slot toilets behind a curtain on the factory floor, work 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, and when burned out return by train to their peasant farms in the villages, a cost to no one! America has lost its manufacturing to this unending, self-propagating, communist controlled army of workers, who champion the education of their children and sacrifice all to make it happen! The work done in Michigan, by big, heavy – bodied, meat eating, car driving, McMansion dwelling, 8 to 5, weekends off, and annual vacations abroad, indolent spoiled drug infested early retiring slobs – will be so expensive and poorly crafted, it will fill the scrapyards in four years, in useless pieces, just like the cars they used to build! – and the world will go to Asia, buy non-planned obsolescent, reasonably crafted, graft free, pure, clean, unspoiled by vulture capitalist trickery, products at less than half the price, and by then, probably using Yuan, safe from Yankee Bankster, Gangster, Swindler, Shyster, Shylock, practices – It is all over folks! The Bush administration screwed the world,(even little Iceland was victimized, shame! Yankee-pig Doodle! Shame!) and the world is still smarting, and will for a long time! You won’t sell a Yankee product ever again, especially a financial one, and you can’t outwork the Asian, you simply don’t have the quantity of quality, educated, low cost workers it takes! Time for the American Dream, the unsustainable, magazine advertising one, to die, time for a new, sustainable, corruption free, moral and world fitting “American Reality” to be born, time for the fat-assed, meat-eating, huge muscled, worker, once required in primitive workplaces of the past, to die out, and a new mechanized, computerized, light, fast, cheap, vegetarian, and very durable worker to take over – it is an unfeeling, evolutionary fact of the factory floor – Mr. Muscle is no longer needed, hydraulics and electronics have replaced him. Miss Fast-and-furious is needed, she runs the new technology! This is what makes the Detroit system historic and obsolete today!
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Too bad everyone is starting to figure out that these wind turbines are nothing but a scam which do nothing to make energy more abundant, affordable or reduce CO2. They are nothing but a useless eyesore and a political scam. They do nothing, produce nothing and are absolutely worthless. No change that…They are worthless than nothing, because they end up increasing the cost to the ratepayer at the taxpayer’s expense, because the small amount of energy they do produce has to be regulated with ancillary regulation energy which costs a fortune and greatly increases expense to us common folk. Yeah, the rich men who own land or are trading carbon credits will make out fine, but those of us who are just middle working class stiffs are getting the shaft. Best thing that could happen is to have Detroit build these things as crappy as they build cars.
June 4th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Uncle B,…..you should be put out of our misery and be humanely destroyed.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:07 am
Um, we have two extremes here. The truth – almost always is someway in between.
The UAW has had a history of workers that slacked, but since the 1980’s a LOT has changed! Most would be surprised how union employees actually work. True, you’ll find your occasional slacker… as with ANY industry. But by and large the union workers submit to union bosses which directly work WITH the auto manufacturers these days. In short, it’s not like the 1960’s and 1970’s when men would sit with their feet up and their cap over their faces taking a ciesta. Those days are gone!
I would absolutely LOVE IT if someone could actually make an energy-creating device – regardless of means (wind, water, nuclear, etc.) that would actually be LESS money than what one has to invest! So far, there are virtually no incentives to invest in ANY of the energy-creating devices: solar, wind, etc. I would absolutely LOVE to buy something that would actually MAKE me money with my investment.
While I pray that this company’s investment will pay off – and the displaced employees he’s hired won’t be subject to being laid off yet again – I just don’t see how wind energy will be viable in the Detroit area. With an average wind speed of 10 mph, it just won’t be enough to generate any “real” power for ANY consistent benefit. So, I don’t poo-poo the invention, I’m just saying I don’t think it’ll work for many (if any) in the Southwest Michigan area – the wind speeds just aren’t there! Perhaps I’m missing something but it just doesn’t seem worth the investment dollars needed to spend on alternative energy.
To sum up, I wish the company and employees well with their product(s), I just don’t see it as viable – at least for those who live in the Northern suburbs of Detroit.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:11 am
does anyone know if they started to hire yet??
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:50 am
who we can contact u
our tel 0031644625547