New Hampshire’s House of Representatives voted to pass a bill that would make “hard labor” a sentencing option for certain prisoners. According to the legislation, such labor would include manufacturing or assembling work that requires “significant physical exertion,” intended to serve as “punitive retribution and societal deterrence.”

The bill stated that the sentence would apply in the case of a conviction involving capital murder and serious sexual assaults on children. It requires an affirmative vote of at least nine jurors in a 12-person jury. If imposed, the defendant would face life imprisonment at hard labor without parole.

Semitrailer and truck body manufacturer Wabash National Corporation announced plans to idle two facilities in Little Falls, Minnesota, and Goshen, Indiana. The company expects the actions to result in approximately 270 layoffs.

A Wabash SEC filing mentioned 56 job cuts in Minnesota and 214 in Indiana. WARN Notices revealed that impacted positions will include maintenance and production coordinators, machine operators, assemblers and welders — with the latter two accounting for 83 of the affected employees in Indiana. The Minnesota WARN Notice did not disclose the number of workers by role.

https://www.ien.com/operations/video/22957901/aerospace-firm-pays-15m-for-pushing-shoddy-ejection-seat-parts

Teledyne Electronic Safety Products (Teledyne ESP), an aerospace and defense electronics company based in Chatsworth, California, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle allegations it sold parts to the Department of Defense that were not up to contract specifications.

The firm’s False Claims Act violations can be traced back to the manufacture of Digital Recovery Sequencer (DRS) units used in ejection seat systems. The devices, which were developed to replace the Analog Recovery Sequencer used in similar systems on F-15, F-16, F-22, A10, B-1B and B-2 aircraft, are critical. They precisely sequence functions including pilot escape, seat stabilization and parachute deployment.

U.S. Steel faces a lawsuit from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after the company allegedly took unlawful action against a pregnant worker who suffered a miscarriage after months of work assignments inconsistent with her doctor’s restrictions. The complaint claims that U.S. Steel violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act by failing to provide the employee with “reasonable accommodations.”

The commission noted that the individual began working for U.S. Steel in 2012 and, since about 2018, had worked as a mobile equipment operator at the company’s Minntac mine near Mountain Iron, Minnesota. The suit added that she typically operated a cleanup loader and served as a “fill-in” team lead leading up to her pregnancy around August 2023.

The worker informed her immediate coworkers about her pregnancy around August and, later, her shift manager in October. She provided a doctor’s note that said she could not operate heavy machinery, tracked vehicles or production trucks for the rest of the pregnancy. U.S. Steel allegedly responded by placing her on short-term sickness and accident leave for about a month without consulting her, while work within her restrictions reportedly remained available.

On Christmas morning in 2023, the cargo vessel Genius Star XI was on its way from Vietnam to California, navigating through heavy weather in the North Pacific Ocean while carrying massive lithium-ion batteries, when a fire broke out in the cargo hold.

The crew put out the fire, but then, three days later, as the ship sought refuge at the nearest port in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, another fire started in a second cargo hold. The crew was able to fight the fire, and it was put out the next day. No one was injured, but the incidents aboard the 410-foot-long Genius Star XI caused some $3.8 million in property damage. According to a recent NTSB report, the probable cause of the two fires was improperly secured lashing belts.

Low earth orbit is a vast place, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty.

And as countries across the globe are increasingly using this space for connectivity and research, satellite populations are skyrocketing – and we may witness some close calls.

It was recently revealed that a SpaceX satellite nearly collided with another, unexpected satellite, the source of which is still not fully understood.

According to SpaceX VP of engineering Michael Nicholls, a SpaceX satellite encountered another satellite that had been launched sometime in the previous 48 hours from China’s CAS Space.

Nicholls said “no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed” by CAS Space and that the two spacecraft came within 200 meters of one another. As tech reporter Nicholas Werner pointed out, “in space terms, they basically high-fived.”

Welcome to another episode of Gen Z in Manufacturing, a podcast where I talk to young people about their journeys in manufacturing, how they intend to influence the industry and what they are looking for from an employer.

For this episode, I welcome Gabe Schulze, a 25-year-old industrial engineer at Path Machining + Automation.

Schulze holds a bachelor’s and master’s in industrial engineering and has worked for Path Machining for just over one year. At the company, Schulze leads initiatives to optimize CNC machining operations, implement standardized processes and improve unattended shift performance. His role includes CNC programming, process capability studies, tooling strategy and data-driven problem solving.

Another community filed a lawsuit against a group of fire truck manufacturers, alleging a price-fixing conspiracy that forced cities and fire departments to overpay for their vehicles. The latest legal action comes from the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and targets REV Group, Oshkosh Corporation, Pierce Manufacturing (owned by Oshkosh) and Rosenbauer America.

The city of La Crosse, Wisconsin, filed the first lawsuit in August, claiming that the aforementioned companies conspired to restrict supply and drive up fire truck prices and that inflation alone does not explain the increases. Other entities with cases include Onalaska, Wisconsin, and fire departments in Pennsylvania, Maine and New York.

Ann Arbor’s filing claims that the companies control up to 80% of the fire truck market and that their alleged conspiracy contributed to prices doubling over the past decade, while also extending delivery times from 18 months to four years. The argument echoed La Crosse’s case from August, which stated that a fire truck priced at $500,000 in the mid-2010s now costs about $1 million, while specialized units that once sold for $900,000 now exceed $2 million.