Club to host Santa

Club to host Santa

CANFIELD

The Kiwanis Club of Western Mahoning County will host Santa Claus on Saturday at Farmers National Bank in Canfield.

Santa will be at the bank at 20 S. Broad St. from 9 a.m. until noon.

Ohio shale-drilling permits increase

COLUMBUS

Shale-drilling permits in Ohio have topped the 1,000 mark since 2009.

Of the 1,015 permits issued for horizontal wells in the Utica shale through Dec. 7, 551 were approved this year, an increase from 376 in 2012.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources had projected 525 new permits for 2013.

The ODNR expects 750 permits to be issued next year and 1,000 in 2015, as shale drilling ramps up across the state.

Ford plans to hire 11,000 in 2014

DEARBORN, Mich.

Ford Motor Co. says it will hire more than 11,000 people in the U.S. and Asia next year to support an aggressive rollout of new vehicles.

Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, said the company plans to hire 5,000 workers in the U.S. — including 3,300 white-collar staff such as engineers — and 6,000 workers in Asia. Many of those hires will work at two new plants that are opening in China.

This will be the most people Ford has hired in one year since 2000, the company said.

Hinrichs said 2014 will be the busiest product year in Ford’s 111-year history, with 23 new vehicles being introduced around the world. Of those, 16 will be sold in the U.S., including a new Mustang sports car, Transit Connect van and Lincoln MKC small utility vehicle.

Labor group sees progress at Foxconn

SAN FRANCISCO

A labor group monitoring three Chinese factories that make iPhones and other Apple products says once-oppressive working conditions have improved steadily in the past 18 months, but more must be done to reduce the amount of overtime that employees work.

The audit released Thursday by the Fair Labor Association represents the final assessment in a process that started last year at plants run in China by Apple’s largest supplier, Foxconn.

Reports depicting the Foxconn plants as inhumane sweatshops prompted Apple Inc. to hold its foreign contractors to higher standards. The Cupertino, Calif., company joined the Fair Labor Association last year as part of a commitment to improve the situation.

Apple is the only major tech company in a 14-year-old labor group that also includes clothing makers, shoe makers and other manufacturers promising to curb abuses in overseas factories.

The report concluded Foxconn factories in Longhua, Chengdu and Guanlan had reached virtually all the goals set out in a plan adopted last year.

Excessively long work schedules remain a problem, however. The FLA says more than half of the 170,000 employees at the Foxconn factories exceeded China’s legal limit of 36 monthly overtime hours from March through October.

Vindicator staff/wire reports