Laid-off auto workers find solar job power

MIDLAND, MICH. - Few states lost more jobs in the Great Recession than Michigan - where nearly one out of every 10 jobs disappeared. But, as CBS News senior correspondent Anthony Mason reports, one CEO is fighting back.

"We have a war today," Andrew Liveris says. "It's an American crisis on our jobs."

Liveris, who runs Dow Chemical, says the country needs a new plan to attack unemployment. "It needs to reinvent how to put those workers to work," he says. Liveris says it's the responsibility of both the government and businesses to deal with it.

Dow is doing its part. The company is developing a new solar power technology. Dow has started hiring laid-off workers, many from the auto industry, and retraining them to be solar shingle assemblers.

Jim Rogers worked for an automotive supplier for almost 24 years. After 15 months out of work Rogers, 51, has a job again.

Is re-invention the blueprint for a new career?

"If you want to work, you have to do something," Rogers said. "Old School isn't cutting it anymore."

Jim Dorcey went into bankruptcy after he was laid off from a major automaker. "I lost my house, I lost my car," he says.

Now, he's a quality control manager for Dow. Dorcey says it's a "new lease on life."

Over the past decade, one-third of the manufacturing workforce in the U.S. - 5.5 million jobs - have vanished.

Liveris says creating manufacturing jobs must be America's priority. After President John F. Kennedy said, "We go to the moon," Liveris says, "it actually created whole new industries because of a national mission. I think we need a national mission."

A mission could help the entire economy take off. For every $1.00 in sales generated from manufacturing, another $1.40 is created for the businesses that support it.

"Since when did making stuff become a bad thing?" Liveris asks. This past year, Michigan has created more than 30,000 new manufacturing jobs - more than any other state. To make solar shingles over the next four years, Dow expects to hire 1,300 workers with starting salaries of $30,000.

"It's jobs where workers from displaced industries can be retooled and retrained," Liveris says. "We not only can do it. We are doing it."

[aftinc]

Green technology is still not cost effective, has anyone priced adding solar panels or a windmill to your house, thats why there's no push here in the US. This is all a bunch of media BS. Oil is used to produce just about every product you touch and see every day. To ensure the safety of generations to come the US has to make massive investments into oil gas production. We've backed away from production because of the greeny's, to much now even at this point.

[tsigili]

The question is.......how does their old job compare to their new job?

It seems that most "re-training" ends up in underemployment.......hardly a good place to be, in the jobs market.

[akwriter]

The other option is "no job." Sure, you're other job may have paid a lot more, but it's gone and it's never coming back. That is the reality. Maybe we can't buy that McMansion with the new wages, but at least with a job we can keep a roof over our family and food on the table. Seems a far better option than the alternative.

[rgage12]

Nation needs to move at light-speed on Green Energy Jobs, instead the Dems and GOP are in the backpockets of rich corps...

[akwriter]

Make that some Dems and most of the GOP/Tea Party are in the backpockets of the rich corps....

[reluctantzealot]

Make that Obama is in the backpocket of the rich corps...

[economystic]

I have been trying to promote building windmills in Detroit for almost 10 years now. I fugured that if they had the ability to produce cars, they had the engineers, the factories, the raw materials and a desperate need for employment. Last year I finally heard that a Chinese company was starting a plant in west Texas. Way to go people. We have enough locations to set up enough windmills to produce 115% of the power that this country needs

[reluctantzealot]

Can't put up windmills, stupid liberal democrats fight it in court tooth and nail....NIMBY!

Just look at the decades long fight at Cape Cod....

What company is going to risk years of legal battles?

No, other countries will move ahead while we "save the birds and the view".

[walt9800]

"Laid-off auto workers find solar job power" ... did someone lay off the editors??

[akwriter]

There is nothing wrong with the headline. It's a perfectly good play on words...lame, but good.

[msimamaji]

Way to go!!! Solar energy is only one component of green technology. Combined green technology is a multi=trillion dollar industry that could be a source of millions of new jobs.
Lest I forget, our aging coal-fired power plants need to be updated. We need to eliminate mercury emissions. We also use the carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants to produce algal oil - which can be refined into clean burning gasoline and diesel.
Retrofitting and updating or aging power plants could produce up to 200,000 jobs according to a report by EPA chief, Lisa Jackson.
I've only mentioned a fraction of the possibilities. Green tech = long green $$$$. We need to go green. We also need to save the EPA.

[reluctantzealot]

Obama pumped trillions into green energy...

What have we got to show for it?

[us_1776]

Thank you Dow Chemical.

I wish there were more companies out there taking some responsiblity and helping to put America back to work instead of the norm of shipping our jobs overseas.


.

[rightbehind]

Dido! Thank you Dow for being a loyal company of the United States.

[akwriter]

I'm somewhat torn here.....Dow Chemical had done more than almost any other company to pollute the earth with it's chemicals, and yet it is also a global company that believes in America. For this solar energy program, I applaud them and wish more American companies, like IBM, HP, and such, would quit selling us out.

[mikeakasleeper]

Way to go Jim Dorcey! You were awesome!

[rightbehind]

For what was spent on the 2 corporate wars we could have put solar power on 1 of every 3 single family homes in the United States. Just think of the jobs that would have been created. Instead we got hardly any effort to correct this and what was done was to produce solar farms for the power companies so we would be forced to continue to line their pockets.

[sjc_1]

Better yet, take $100 billion that we wasted in Iraq in ONE year and make 100 fuel plants that can turn natural gas into gasoline at the rate of 1 million gallons per plant per day. No need for mid east oil ever again.

[akwriter]

Even better, work on converting the transportation industry to hydrogen (fuel cell) powered vehicles. The "waste product" from the fuel cell is water. Use wind and solar to make the hydrogen and our existing natural gas lines to transport it. We could clean up the air, create millions of jobs, and not even need the oil from Alaska or Texas.