Johnson Controls Inc. in August will shutter its Oberlin, Ohio plant, resulting in the layoff of 145 workers.

The plant, which opened in 1996, produces seats for Ford Econoline vans.


Johnson has been realigning its interiors business to become more cost effective, shifting some work to low-cost countries including Mexico.
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The decades old former Detroit Gasket plant-now Corteco-will be closed this summer, announced the company's owner. Freudenberg-NOK announced today that it has reached an agreement in principle to sell specific assets of Corteco's North American Traditional Aftermarket Business to ROL Manufacturing. Closing is expected to take place in June 2007, subject to the fulfillment of customary closing pre-conditions. As part of this move, the Newport gasket manufacturing plant will be closed. The Newport facility employed approximately 37 hourly and salary employees. All manufacturing equipment and activity will be transferred to ROL Manufacturing's brand new state-of-the-art facility in Montreal, Canada.
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By JASON DePARLE
Published: June 10, 2007
The Arniko Highway climbs out of Kathmandu in long wending loops that pay twin tribute to the impassability of Himalayan terrain and the implausibility of its development. Outside Africa, no country is poorer than Nepal. Its per capita income looks like a misprint: $270 a year. Sudan’s is more than twice as high. Nearly two-thirds of Nepalis lack electricity. Half the preschoolers are malnourished. To the list of recent woes add regicide — 10 royals slaughtered in 2001 by a suicidal prince — and a Maoist insurgence.

Gary Knight/VII, for The New York Times
With few resources of its own, Nepal relies on workers who have gone abroad for 12 percent of its G.D.P.
A few hours east of the city, a gravel road juts across a talc quarry, where the work would be disturbing enough even if the workers were not under five feet tall. Scores of young teenagers, barefoot and stunted, lug rocks from a lunar pit. The journey continues through a district capital flying Communist flags and ends, 12 hours after it began, above a forlorn canyon. Halfway down the cactus-lined slope, a destitute farmer named Gure Sarki recently bought four goats.

The story of Gure Sarki’s goats involves decades of thinking about foreign aid and the type of program often seen as modern practice at its best. Two years ago, an organizer appeared in the canyon to say that the Nepal government (with money from the World Bank) was making local grants for projects of poor villagers’ choosing. First villagers had to catalog their problems. With Sarki as chairman, Chaurmuni village made its list:

“Not able to eat for the whole year.â€