Astronomers find a potentially new breed of neutron star

The object, an ultra-long period magnetar, had been theoretical until now.

By Samantha Hill  |  Published: Friday, February 4, 2022

RELATED TOPICS: NEUTRON STARS | WHITE DWARF | MAGNETARS

An artist’s impression of what the object might look like if it’s a magnetar. Magnetars are incredibly magnetic neutron stars, some of which sometimes produce radio emission. Known magnetars rotate every few seconds, but theoretically, “ultra-long period magnetars” could rotate much more slowly.

ICRAR

About 4,000 light-years from Earth, an astral entity released a large flash of radiation three times an hour, each for a minute at a time, taking researchers by surprise.

“This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations,” said lead author Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker in a press release. “That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that.

About every 20 minutes, the object becomes one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. Likely a neutron star or a white dwarf — the dense remains of formers stars — the object also emits highly-polarized radio waves. The study was published in Nature Jan. 27, 2022.

If that wasn’t interesting enough, Hurley-Walker also suspects the object also might have a high amount of magnetic energy which would put it in the running to be an ‘ultra-long period magnetar.’

Bridging the gap

Magnetars are the most magnetic objects in the universe. Their magnetic fields are over a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth’s. Like their less magnetic cousins, pulsars, magnetars are known for emitting bursts of radiation. But where pulsars tend to be reliable with their pulses, magnetars are a bit more erratic. Some of this erratic behavior can be seen in fast radio bursts (FRB), sudden and intense explosions of radiation, which have been traced back to magnetars.

But how young magnetars reach the stage of being able to produce FRBs is a mystery. One solution is ultra-long period magnetars, which could bridge the gap.

“It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically,” said Hurley-Walker. “But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright. Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.”

These transients — objects that turn on and off — are not new to researchers, however transients can often be described as slow, appearing over a few days and disappearing within months, or fast, which appear for a brief second at a time. This strange object did neither, emphasizing its uniqueness.

According to Hurley-Walker, "more detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never noticed before."

Study reveals hostile conditions on Earth as life evolved

Earth's atmosphere has not always been O2-rich.

BYAMIT MALEWAR
FEBRUARY 6, 2022

The earth as seen from space. Photo by Pixabay

Ozone (O3), making up a tiny proportion of Earth’s atmosphere by weight, is one of Earth’s most essential molecules for life. Without a substantial stratospheric O3 layer, the surface would receive higher amounts of harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. However, this modern-day O3 layer would not exist without abundant molecular oxygen (O2), and the Earth’s atmosphere has not always been O2-rich.

Atmospheres in the solar system continuously change, and Earth’s atmosphere is no exception. Earth’s atmospheric oxygenation has varied through time from anoxic origins, with O2 now the second most abundant constituent of the atmosphere. The last 2.4 billion years represent an essential chapter in developing the biosphere. Oxygen levels rose from almost zero to significant amounts in the atmosphere, with concentrations fluctuating but eventually reaching modern-day concentrations approximately 400 million years ago.

More complex multicellular organisms and animals began to colonize land during this time.

Gregory Cooke, a Ph.D. researcher in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, led the study. He said the findings raise new questions about the evolutionary impact of UV radiation, as many forms of life are known to be negatively affected by intense doses of UV radiation.


He said: “We know that UV radiation can have disastrous effects if life is exposed to too much. For example, it can cause skin cancer in humans. Some organisms have effective defence mechanisms, and many can repair some of the damage UV radiation causes.”

“Whilst elevated amounts of UV radiation would not prevent life’s emergence or evolution, it could have acted as a selection pressure, with organisms better able to cope with greater amounts of UV radiation receiving an advantage.”

The research – A revised lower estimate of ozone columns during Earth’s oxygenated history – has been published in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science.

The amount of UV radiation reaching the Earth is limited by the ozone in the atmosphere, described by the researchers as “one of the most important molecules for life” because of its role in absorbing UV radiation as it passes into the Earth’s atmosphere.


Ozone forms as a result of sunlight and chemical reactions – and its concentration is dependent on the level of oxygen in the atmosphere.

For the last 40 years, scientists had believed that the ozone layer could shield life from harmful UV radiation when the oxygen level in the atmosphere reached about 1% relative to the present atmospheric level.

The new modelling challenges that assumption. It suggests the level of oxygen needed may have been much higher, perhaps 5% to 10% of present atmospheric levels.

As a result, there were periods when UV radiation levels at the Earth’s surface were much more significant, which could have been the case for most of the Earth’s history.


Mr. Cooke said: “If our modelling is indicative of atmospheric scenarios during Earth’s oxygenated history, then for over a billion years the Earth could have been bathed in UV radiation that was much more intense than previously believed.”

“This may have had fascinating consequences for life’s evolution. It is not precisely known when animals emerged, or what conditions they encountered in the oceans or on land. However, depending on oxygen concentrations, animals and plants could have faced much harsher conditions than today’s world. We hope that the full evolutionary impact of our results can be explored in the future.”

The results will also lead to new predictions for exoplanet atmospheres. Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars. The presence of certain gases, including oxygen and ozone, may indicate the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. The results of this study will aid in the scientific understanding of surface conditions in other worlds.

Journal Reference
G. J. Cooke, D. R. Marsh, C. Walsh, B. Black and J.-F. Lamarque. A revised lower estimate of ozone columns during Earth’s oxygenated history. Royal Society Open Science 2022 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211165

Young stars illuminate 'Chamaeleon' stellar nursery in new Hubble image


By Samantha Mathewson 

published 1 day ago

Hubble's view of the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex captures dark, dusty molecular clouds where new stars form, along with striking reflection nebulas, which glow bright blue from the light of nearby baby stars, and bright clumps and arcs of interstellar gas called Herbig-Haro objects. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/K. Luhman/T. Esplin et al./ESO/Gladys Kober)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new view of a stellar nursery illuminated by the bright blue light of young stars.

This vast stellar nursery, known as the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex, stretches 65 light-years wide, occupying most of the Chamaeleon constellation, which is visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Located 522 light-years away from Earth, this star-forming region is one of the nearest active star formation regions to our planet.

The recent Hubble Space Telescope image — comprising 23 observations made by the space telescope — captures just one of three segments of the vast region, called Chamaeleon Cloud 1 (Cha 1), according to a statement from NASA.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

The new image, which NASA released on Jan. 31, showcases dark, dusty molecular clouds where new stars form, along with striking reflection nebulas, which glow bright blue from the light of nearby baby stars.

Hubble also captured bright clumps and arcs of interstellar gas called Herbig-Haro objects. Gas ejected by "protostars" collides with the clouds of gas and dust. In turn, the jets from the infant stars energize the gas, creating the radiant Herbig-Haro objects captured in the new Hubble image, according to the statement.

"The white-orange cloud at the bottom of the image hosts one of these protostars at its center," NASA said. "Its brilliant white jets of hot gas are ejected in narrow torrents from the protostar's poles, creating the Herbig-Haro object HH 909A."

Observations of Cha 1 were collected during NASA's hunt for extremely dim, low-mass "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, which are more massive than most planets but not heavy enough to ignite like stars. The images of Cha 1 were taken using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2. The starburst, or cross-like, features seen around the stars is created as the bright light from the stars bends around Hubble's cross-shaped struts that support the telescope's secondary mirror, NASA said in the statement.

The European Southern Observatory's ground-based Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) InfraRed CAMera (VIRCAM) also aided in observing the Cha 1 stellar nursery.

Samantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News. When not writing or reading about science, Samantha enjoys traveling to new places and taking photos! You can follow her on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13.

FROG LEGS ARE OFF THE DINNER PLATE AND ONTO THE FRONTIER OF LIMB REGENERATION

That's one small leap for a frog, one giant leap for limb regeneration.

By Cassidy Ward

Photo: Holly Mahaffey Photography/Getty Images


Curt Connors famously became an accidental villain in the Spider-Man canon when he attempted to regenerate a lost limb using lizard DNA. Lizards have always been our go-to model for vertebrate regeneration owing to the well-known phenomenon of tail loss and regrowth, but it might be that we should have put our chips down on frogs.

Michael Levin is a researcher from the Department of Biology at Tufts University who, along with colleagues, achieved an incredible level of limb regeneration in African clawed frogs. Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances.

The procedure involves a wearable bioreactor called the BioDome which is placed directly on the amputation site to allow the wound a level of protection from the environment. Inside the bioreactor is a drug cocktail which sends signals to the body stimulating regeneration.

“It’s attached to the animal and stays there for 24 hours. We fill it with a silk-based gel with a drug cocktail mixed in. After 24 hours we take it off and we watch the animals do their thing,” Levin told SYFY WIRE.

African clawed frogs aren’t known for any particular regenerative ability. They have a similar capacity for healing as we do, and that’s precisely why the team chose them. Previous experiments have used froglets — immature frogs — who may have retained some of the regenerative ability which comes with development and metamorphosis. In this study, only adults were used in order to ensure there was no latent ability for regrowth.

This strategy for regeneration is novel in the way it works. Every animal’s body knows how to create complex structures at least one time, otherwise we wouldn’t develop in the womb or the egg, but for many vertebrate species it’s a one-time deal. If you lose a complex structure after it has been built, there’s no getting it back. Other studies have used stem cells as a way to get the body to revert to that initially flexible state and regrow structures. The BioDome, with its drug cocktail, does something simpler and potentially more elegant.

We are interested in identifying triggers, we don’t want to micromanage the process,” Levin said. “We want to find upstream signals which tell the body to build whatever goes here. We’re not going to tell it how to do it or how it’s made, because we don’t know. We’re going to provide a signal that pushes the cells to do it.”

Photo: Nirosha Murugan

That’s what the team’s protocol does. The drug cocktail, made of five different components, reduces swelling and scar formation while stimulating the growth of new tissues. In the studied frogs, this brief initial intervention was enough for their bodies to construct a whole new limb over the course of several months.

As with most medical treatments, there was some variability in the results. Levin tells us that some animals had a moderate response while others reconstructed nearly complete limbs. Yet, even the best legs weren’t fully complete. They were missing the long toes at the end of the foot and the webbing. It’s worth noting that the incomplete reconstruction might have been the result of when observation stopped, and if the frogs were given more time, they might have finished the job.

“They were not cosmetically perfect,” Levin said. “In other ways they were very good legs. They were fully functional. The animals were using them to get around and standing on them, and they were touch sensitive at the very tips.”

More promising perhaps, than even the results of this study, is the fact that this drug cocktail was the team’s first at bat. Many times, new therapies take dozens or hundreds of derivations before landing on one which works. That wasn’t the case here.

“This was our first guess. I’m hopeful that if this is what our guess looks like, the optimized cocktail will be way better. It’s got to be. There’s no way we happened on the best one the first time out of the gate,” Levin said.

The bioreactor and drug cocktail also has the potential for applications elsewhere in the body, regrowing other limbs and tissues, including internal organs.

“None of the things we did were limb specific. We didn’t have anything in the cocktail that was specific for making legs. It’s a very general kind of trigger that says build whatever goes here. We have great hopes that this is ultimately going to address all sorts of regenerative needs,” Levin said.

All that being said, there’s still a lot of work to do answering a lot of basic questions about the process of regeneration before it’s ready for prime time in human patients. The team is currently doing experiments in mice and will later move into larger mammalian models, though they haven’t yet determined what those will be or when they’ll take place.

It’s early days, but these results are promising. With any luck, we’ll have a reliable process for the regeneration of complex tissues without the risk of becoming a humanoid reptile bent on destruction.

The World’s First Cloned Black-Footed Ferret is Seeking a Virile yet Gentle Partner

Posted byTonia Nissen

6 February 2022


The world’s first cloned black-footed ferret just celebrated her one birthday and has reached the breeding age. Elizabeth Ann is on the verge of making history.

And, if she is thriving and has healthy offspring, the small predator will provide a vital boost to efforts to conserve her critically endangered species.

Scientists admit, however, that they will have to be exceedingly cautious when screening potential mates for Elizabeth Ann, who is being held at a conservation center outside Fort Collins, Colorado.


They believe that the man they finally choose must have one crucial attribute in particular: he must be gentle.

The black-footed ferret (Mustella nigripes) is not recognized for having a pleasant disposition.

Elizabeth Ann, for example, snarls at caretakers who go too near.

Credit: The Guardian

However, according to experts, the species is in critical need of new DNA, which Elizabeth Ann may offer, as long as she survives the breeding encounter.

Oliver Ryder, director of genetics conservation at San Diego Zoo, told the Observer that:


“When it comes to black-footed ferrets, the mating scenario can get a little rough and we don’t want Elizabeth Ann to be injured. She is precious. So we need an experienced male who has already produced offspring and who is therefore not going to be infertile – a problem that affects many black-footed ferret males today. In addition, we will select him for his gentleness.”

Ryder added that selecting a mate for Elizabeth Ann was now “imminent.”

The black-footed ferret is a grumpy predator with black markings on its face, paws, and tail, 60cm in length.

It originally roamed vast swaths of the United States’ Great Plains, subsisting primarily on prairie dogs, a kind of ground squirrel.
Thought To be Extinct For a Long TIme

However, it was wiped off as farming grew over the central United States, and it was assumed to be extinct by the 1970s.

Then, one night in 1981, John Hogg, a rancher in Wyoming, heard weird sounds on his property and discovered a colony of black-footed ferrets.

Credit: New Hampshire PBS

Wildlife scientists rushed to the ranch, and it has since been utilized to build a ferret breeding program to re-establish colonies throughout the United States.

Only seven of the ferrets discovered on Hogg Ranch were able to reproduce.

Consequently, the black-foot population is strongly inbred, with each animal having kinship with the others that falls between that of a sibling and that of a first cousin.

Mutations are now wreaking havoc on the breeding population.

Elizabeth Ann can deliver an influx of new ferret genes, which is much required.

She is the result of tissue extracted decades ago from a female black-footed ferret named Willa.

Her cells were frozen in liquid nitrogen at San Diego’s Frozen Zoo, which stores genetic resources from endangered species, such as DNA, sperm, eggs, embryos, and living tissue.

It was determined a few years ago to utilize the same technique used in Scotland to make Dolly the Sheep in 1996 to develop a clone of Willa.

Her cells were used to create embryos, then implanted into three female domestic ferrets.

Two of the pregnancies failed, while the third surrogate mother produced one stillborn child… and Elizabeth Ann, who is now flourishing in her Colorado home on a diet of hamsters.

Her DNA, however, has distinct versions of the genes that predominate in the breeding program’s inbred ferrets, raising hopes that her children may considerably increase the genetic viability of black-footed ferrets.

Elizabeth Ann is a treasure trove of genetic diversity as far as we are concerned,” Ryder says.

In addition, plans are in the works to produce another batch of cloned black-footed ferrets with the same goal in mind: to increase the species’ genetic variety and reverse its reproductive decline.


“That’s the crux of the effort here,” said Ryder. “Can Elizabeth Ann pass along her genes to descendant generations of black-footed ferrets?”

Ryder went on to say that Elizabeth Ann’s tale has far-reaching consequences for all endangered animals.

Ryder added that we should be storing cells from all kinds of endangered species right now because we’re losing biodiversity, and wild animal gene pools are diminishing.

At the very least, if we have the cells, we may accomplish for other species what we want to achieve for the black-footed ferret with Elizabeth Ann in the future.

From science fiction to dystopian fact

We shouldn’t be surprised when sci-fi writers correctly predict the future, says Garth Groombridge, while Frances Starbuck detects the shadow of Edgar Allan Poe looming over the current crisis at No 10

Vincent Price in a scene from The Masque of the Red Death. 

Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Letters
Fri 4 Feb 2022

Somebody at the Guardian seemed surprised that occasionally novelists and science fiction writers get the future right (Editorial, 30 January). Those of us who have loved, read, or even written science fiction can only chuckle quietly at their surprise. It is the nature of future-thinking authors to take an idea, even in embryo, and run with it. Sometimes, examples such as HG Wells actually predicting a city-destroying bomb and calling it an “atom-bomb” in 1913 can be a bit breathtaking.

I’m still impressed with Ray Bradbury’s 1953 short story The Murderer, which predicts the mobile phone and house-computer, and Henry Kuttner’s Year Day (circa 1953) which predicts mass advertising and virtual reality. To me, a recent article about a visit to Donbas perfectly matched Orwell’s Airstrip One in 1984, even down to the ruined buildings, torture centre and bad coffee.

Belonging to a generation who hoped, by AD 2000, we would have proper self-drive flying cars, video phones, computers that follow complex voice commands and tourist trips to the Moon (Frank Hampson, drawing Dan Dare in 1950, promised much of that, and more), I find our 21st century to be something of a disappointment. Since 2016, I think we have all finished up living a badly written 1970s dystopian novel instead.
Garth Groombridge
Southampton

On novelists predicting the future, for “partygate” read The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe – or see the wonderfully over-the-top film starring Vincent Price.
Frances Starbuck
Lepton, West Yorkshire

In a Landslide Victory, Mexican GM Workers Vote In an Independent Union

February 04, 2022 / Dan DiMaggio, Luis Feliz Leon

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“Today I believe we as workers are more united than ever,” said Alejandra Morales, SINTTIA’s principal officer, who has worked at the plant for 11 years. “Not only in Silao, but in all of Mexico.” The independent union's landslide victory at the plant is a major breakthrough for workers seeking to break the vice grip of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor movement. Photo: Casa Obrera del Bajio

Auto workers at a General Motors plant in central Mexico delivered a landslide victory to an independent union in a vote held February 1-2. It's a major breakthrough for workers and labor activists seeking to break the vice grip of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor movement.

Turnout among the plant’s 6,300 eligible voters was 88 percent. The independent union SINTTIA (the National Auto Workers Union) picked up 4,192 votes—78 percent of the vote. SINTTIA, which grew out of the successful campaign which ousted the previous corrupt union last year, promised to raise wages and fight for workers on the shop floor.

Workers at the Silao plant voted last August to invalidate the contract held by a well-connected national auto workers union headed by Congressman Tereso Medina of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). That union was affiliated to the Congress of Mexican Labor (CTM), the country’s largest union federation.

CTM affiliates, tied to the long-ruling PRI, have long been criticized for signing employer-friendly “protection contracts,” which lock in low wages and prevent workers from organizing genuine unions.

In this week’s vote, a paltry 247 votes went to another CTM affiliate that appeared on the ballot, with 932 (17 percent) to a third union known as “the Coalition,” widely perceived by workers to be a CTM front. (A fourth competitor got just 18 votes.)

“Today I believe we as workers are more united than ever,” said Alejandra Morales, SINTTIA’s principal officer, who has worked at the plant for 11 years in the paint department. “Not only in Silao, but in all of Mexico.”

The weekend before the vote, Morales reported receiving threats outside her home from three people in a pickup with the license plates removed, part of what she called a “campaign of intimidation and defamation” by “the mafia of anti-democratic and charro unions.” SINTTIA’s secretary of organization reported getting death threats on Facebook and WhatsApp.

SHOT IN THE ARM

SINTTIA’s victory is a shot in the arm for the independent union movement in Mexico; the vote was closely followed domestically and internationally.

Under Mexico’s labor law reform, which went into effect in 2019, all existing union contracts must be voted on by May 1, 2023, a measure aimed at allowing workers to democratically choose their unions—a freedom long denied Mexican workers. Most union contracts in Mexico have been signed behind the backs of workers by employers like GM and corrupt Mexican union officials—often before any workers are even hired.

Thus far, votes to delegitimate contracts and open the door toward choosing a new union have been few and far between. As of mid-January, majorities in only 24 workplaces—less than 1 percent of those where legitimation votes have been held—have opted to throw out the existing union. The GM Silao plant is by far the biggest to do this. It’s also the first where workers have voted to join a new union.

“What we hope is that [workers at] new companies see that they can beat the CTM,” said Juan Armando Fajardo Rivera, the union’s press secretary, who has worked at the plant for 13 years. “The CTM isn’t invincible. If you want a union, you can achieve it with the new reform.”

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Support for the effort to vote in a genuine union at GM Silao poured in from unions and labor activists across the globe. The UAW and AFL-CIO issued statements pushing the Mexican government to ensure the vote was fair and free from intimidation. Unionists from Brazil, Canada, and the U.S. joined an international delegation to the vote; among the Brazilian delegation were eight members of local unions at GM.

The second-place finisher, the CTM-linked Coalition, attacked the international solidarity shown by unions and workers around the globe as “foreign interference,” and made the fear of job loss a centerpiece of their campaign. “Both the Canadians and the Americans want to take our production to their countries,” said a leader of the Coalition in an interview with El Financiero.

SINTTIA, for its part, embraced the support. “The union struggle encompasses the whole world,” said Fajardo Rivera. “It’s not just in Mexico.”

“It’s important to recognize the commitment of workers from other countries,” said Morales, “because it’s important that the whole working class, not just from here but globally, be in constant communication for the betterment of everyone.”

WHAT’S NEXT

Once the results are certified by Mexican labor authorities, SINTTIA will enter negotiations with GM. Earlier this week, the automaker reported it had pulled in a record $10 billion in profits last year.

Workers at the Silao plant make the lucrative Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, but earn less than $25 for a 12-hour shift. Foremost on their minds is a wage increase. “What workers would like most is to have a decent salary that is enough for their day-to-day [needs],” said Morales.

Among the other demands that SINTTIA highlighted in its election campaign were bathroom breaks, improved benefits, food and transportation paid for by the company, and better ability to take vacation time.

The independent unions that exist at three of Mexico’s two dozen auto assembly plants—at Nissan, Audi, and Volkswagen—have won higher wages and benefits than those where contracts are controlled by protection unions linked to the CTM. Those unions, who formed the federation FESIIAAAN (the Federation of Independent Unions of the Automobile, Auto Parts, Aerospace and Tire Industries) in 2018, were vocal in their support for SINTTIA.

“We know that those unions have been working for years to obtain what they are earning today [and] their benefits,” said Morales. “We lost a lot over the years, so we are going to have to advance bit by bit.”

Under Mexico’s reformed labor law, the union has six months to negotiate a contract and get it approved by a majority of the plant’s workers.

For more background on the vote, see the January 28 article from Labor Notes, “Mexican Auto Workers to Choose New Union in Landmark Vote.”

Dan DiMaggio is assistant editor of Labor Notes.dan@labornotes.org

 

Luis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.
luis@labornot


MEXICAN AUTO WORKERS JUST MADE HISTORY BY TAKING BACK THEIR UNION

After years of struggle, thousands of auto workers at the massive General Motors plant in Silao, Mexico, just voted overwhelmingly for a more independent and democratic union.

BY MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

An activist holds up a sign during a protest outside the General Motors' pickup truck plant as workers vote to elect a new union under a labor reform that underpins a new trade deal with Canada and the United States, in Silao, Mexico, Feb. 1, 2022. The sign reads: "We demand free and democratic elections in the GM Silao plant." REUTERS/Sergio Maldonado



Mexican auto workers in Silao, Guanajuato, just scored a huge victory that has been years in the making. After first ridding themselves of a corrupt, business-friendly union last year, 6,500 workers at the massive General Motors plant in Silao voted this week on which union would represent them moving forward. On Thursday, Feb. 3, news broke that workers overwhelmingly voted to join the Independent National Auto Workers Union (Sindicato independiente nacional de trabajadores y trabajadoras de la industria automotriz), securing a major victory for rank and filers who have been fighting for a more independent and more democratic union.

In this interview, recorded before the union election took place, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with auto worker and labor organizer Israel Cervantes about this pivotal struggle and what the union election means for workers and the labor movement in Mexico and beyond. Israel Cervantes was one of the first workers at the Silao plant to begin organizing against both the corrupt union and the company. After working at the plant for 13 years, Cervantes was fired for organizing a demonstration of solidarity with striking GM workers in the US in 2019. He is now the leader of a new organization called Generando Movimiento (Generating Movement).

Pre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Spanish-to-English translations provided by Bruce Hobson, coeditor and translator for the México Solidarity Project

New union at GM Mexico plant could benefit US autoworkers

Jamie L. LaReauEric D. Lawrence
Detroit Free Press


It may be too soon to know whether car buyers will see a boost in prices for full-size pickups after workers at a General Motors plant in Mexico voted to form the first independent labor union earlier this week but U.S. autoworkers are cheering the move, saying it makes them more competitive with that nation's workforce.

The union, called the National Independent Union of Workers of the Automotive Industry (SINTTIA), won the vote by a wide margin to represent about 6,500 workers in upcoming labor negotiations at GM's Silao Assembly plant, located about 200 miles north of Mexico City. Both wages and benefits are expected to increase under the union.

GM builds the highly profitable Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra light-duty full-size pickups at Silao. In the current plant contract, it said the wages range from 184.35 pesos to a maximum of 679.53 pesos per day. In dollars, that's about $8.97 to $33.05 per day. In contrast, GM builds the same light-duty pickups at Fort Wayne Assembly in Indiana and will start building the light-duty Silverado at Oshawa Assembly in Ontario soon. GM builds its heavy-duty pickups at Flint Assembly and Oshawa. At those plants, wages range from $18 to $32 an hour.

The 2022 Chevy Silverado starts at $31,500 and climbs to more than $65,000 depending on the model; the GMC Sierra starts at $30,800 and increases to more than $78,000, according to Kelley Blue Book.

An article in the New York Times reports the pay for starting workers at GM's Silao plant is lower than the pay "at some Nissan, Audi and Volkswagen plants in Mexico that are represented by independent unions, and just 60 cents above the country’s daily minimum wage."

UAW members view higher wages in Mexico as good news for both the workers in Mexico and stateside. It brings production costs on par with U.S. factories, potentially giving U.S. workers an edge at winning future products to build.

“Their wages go up, that helps us,” said Eric Welter, UAW Local 598 shop chairman at Flint Assembly. “I don’t know what initial benefit there’ll be, but it makes us more competitive and helps us not to have to make future sacrifices. We’re on a more level playing field in the future.”

'Bleed-off to Mexico'

Welter said the initial benefits will be seen in the U.S. parts and supplier industry.

There, the average wage is about $12 an hour, closer to the wages paid in Mexico, Welter said. He speculates that might prompt suppliers to build more parts in the U.S. rather than in Mexico, then pay to ship them to the states.

“Everyone is trying to get wages up down there, so that it’s not a bleed-off to Mexico,” Welter said

.


GM has made considerable investments in its U.S. operations in recent years. Last month, GM said it will invest $7 billion in four manufacturing sites in Michigan after local and state governments granted it big tax incentives. The investment will include constructing a new battery cell plant in Lansing and expanding its Orion Assembly plant in Orion Township to build the 2024 Silverado EV pickup, along with Factory ZERO in Detroit and Hamtramck.

But other truck plants such as Flint Assembly, Fort Wayne Assembly and Arlington Assembly in Texas have yet to be allocated future electric vehicles, a big concern for other UAW-represented workers.

UAW Local 2209 Shop Chairman Rich LeTourneau at Fort Wayne Assembly did not immediately respond with a comment.

More:GM's huge Michigan investment left out Flint Assembly, leaving workers anxious for future

In a UAW statement issued Thursday, the union said it congratulates the workers of GM Silao on "forming a free, fair and independent SINTTIA union. We commend the Biden Administration and (the office of the United States Trade Representative) for ensuring a fair election process and we look forward to a new era of free, fair, independent unions in Mexico.”

GM's reaction

But what will that all mean for truck prices?

GM spokesman David Barnas declined to comment on how potential wage and benefit gains for workers at Silao might impact GM's U.S. production plans or pricing of future vehicles, noting, "they haven’t even started the collective bargaining process with the newly elected union at Silao yet."

Barnas said the results will be finalized in the following days and GM will act in compliance with the law "to work with the union representatives elected by the workers, SINTTIA, to negotiate a Collective Bargaining Agreement for the manufacturing complex in Silao."

General Motors de Mexico confirms that the compensation benefits in the current collective bargaining agreement remain in place until a new one is negotiated. Barnas said GM is committed to Mexico and its employees.

More:GM CEO Barra earns $23.6 million in 2020, topping 2019 compensation

GM has operated in Mexico for 86 years. Historically, the agreements covering GM Silao provide a total package of salary and benefits that is higher than what the law requires and is competitive with the industry in Silao.

Barnas declined to comment on the current daily wage, citing the recent union voting process and subsequent collective bargaining.

But GM Silao has some of the highest "workplace of choice employee engagement scores" among GM's North America operations and the turnover rate of hourly employees is low, Barnas said.

"Our Silao employees choose GM and elect to remain with the company for extended careers because of the positive and healthy environment that we have established as a corporate leader in Mexico," Barnas said.

An act of courage

The win by the independent union came despite fierce headwinds.

The union was one of four that workers were choosing from, but it represented the only true break from the previous system, said Harley Shaiken, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who is an expert on labor issues in Mexico.

Workers had already been represented by a union, but that former union, the Confederation of Mexican Workers, or CTM, was skilled at derailing reform and would fight hard to maintain the status quo, Shaiken said.

The UAW and the AFL-CIO had called on GM and the Mexican government to protect workers’ rights and make sure the vote was carried out fairly and free of intimidation.

"For Mexican workers, this vote took a lot of courage in an entrenched campaign against a powerful opponent," Shaiken said

Unions at Mexican auto plants have long been accused of corruption at the expense of workers, developing protection contracts that benefit the companies and keep wages low.

The path to the current vote was connected to Mexican labor reforms that allowed workers to weigh in on their collective bargaining agreements.

Shaiken said the vote results are a bellwether for how well the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, would address labor concerns.

More:UAW, AFL-CIO push GM, Mexican government to safeguard workers ahead of union vote

'License to print money'

Besides low wages, workers in Mexico have complained of 12-hour days and work safety issues, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University.

The vote to approve an independent union is a "real chance to see a new light," Masters said.

"There’s a lot of distance between recognition and a contract," Masters said. "But this is certainly a step toward an independent labor movement and if that gains momentum, it’ll mean better wages and working conditions. That would level the playing field and perhaps favor U.S. workers."

But even if the new union in Mexico can negotiate higher wages and better benefits, the levels won't rise to the rate of union-represented workers in the U.S. and Canada for a long time, Masters and Shaiken said. Unifor is the union that represents autoworkers in Canada.

But it will provide a better life and improved work conditions for workers in Mexico and benefit GM, Shaiken said.

"Even if wages triple in Silao, which is not going to happen overnight, it still only means they would be at 30% of what the wages are in Fort Wayne," Shaiken said. "These pickups are a license to print money for GM. GM made $10 billion in North America last year. Higher wages mean this could be a more productive plant, with lower absenteeism and result in higher quality.”

More:GM's UAW workforce profit-sharing check will top $10,000

Given that the majority of the pickups GM builds at Silao Assembly are imported to the U.S., raising wages in Mexico could help Flint or Fort Wayne get future product, he said.

"(Lower wage rate) is why GM has an attraction to locate in Mexico," Shaiken said. "This isn’t a small vehicle where the margins are tight, these are one of the most profitable vehicles and the wage scale isn’t just low, they are suppressed, because the workers haven't had a good union."

Price hike 'inevitable'

While Shaiken does not see any potential improved wages or benefits in Mexico forcing GM to raise prices on its full-size pickups, Masters said consumers may feel it in the pocketbook.

Labor costs are a relatively small cost of operations, but anything at the margin is impactful, Masters said.

There are other issues that could raise production costs too, such as GM's move toward an all-electric lineup by 2035. GM has said it will invest $35 billion over the next three years to develop EVs and self-driving cars. But on Tuesday, CEO Mary Barra said GM now plans to increase that investment, but she did not provide a new figure yet.

Also, inflation is growing, boosting prices on most goods, Masters said. All of those things combining will put pressure on prices, he said.

"I think that’s inevitable. There’ll be higher costs of production associated with wage increases and improved working conditions in Mexico," Masters said. "You see the same thing in the U.S. right now with workers demanding higher wages and disengaging from the workforce because they’re dissatisfied and that puts pressure on employers to raise wages."

More: GM to hire 8,000 people this year as it expands into electric vehicles

More: GM issues firm warning to dealers tempted to overcharge on hot new vehicles

GM's new Mexican union a win for U.S., a shocker for Asian carmakers

Major step to level playing field will likely shake up manufacturing landscape

General Motors' Silao plant in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Workers there voted for an independent labor union to replace a long-serving union seen as too close to management. (Photo courtesy of GM)

KOSUKE SHIMIZU and KEN MORIYASU,

 Nikkei staff writers

February 5, 2022

MEXICO CITY/NEW YORK -- Workers at a General Motors factory in central Mexico have voted to tap an independent labor union to represent them, replacing a long-serving union seen as too cozy with management.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hailed the move as "a victory for workers" and touted the protections afforded by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement signed during the Trump administration. The USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, sought to level the playing field between American and Mexican workers by improving the collective bargaining capabilities of unions.

The new union is expected to bargain hard over rights and wages at GM's plant in Silao -- a trend that could spread to other automakers in the country. Ford Motor, Stellantis, Nissan Motor, Mazda Motor, Honda Motor, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Audi and BMW all have Mexican production facilities.

Global automakers have benefited from Mexico's low wages and strategic geography. The central Mexican plateau lies roughly 1,700 meters above sea level and offers a natural downhill glide to the plains of the American South. Nissan in Aguascalientes, for instance, loads hundreds of cars onto a cargo train each evening -- when the railway is least congested -- to deliver to dealerships throughout the U.S.

On Thursday, the National Independent Union for Workers in the Automotive Industry (SINTTIA) beat out three other unions in the vote, including the Confederation of Mexican Workers, which had held the contract since 1995.

SINTTIA, created by the workers at the Silao plant last year, will now represent the facility's 6,000-plus employees.

The USMCA called for a significantly higher minimum wage for the auto industry, requiring that 40% to 45% of the content of automobiles manufactured in North America must be made by workers paid at least $16 per hour.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai described the union vote at General Motors in Mexico as "a victory for workers." © Reuters

Mexico's amended labor law of 2019 mandated companies and unions to revisit existing labor contracts and authorize a collective bargaining agreement by May 2023. A majority of workers are required to support the CBA.

When the Silao plant held a vote on the CBA in April 2021, Mexico's Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare ordered GM to hold another one after suspicions of fraud were raised over vote-counting.

The USTR also invoked the USMCA's "rapid response" mechanism for the first time the following month over the same suspicions.

In an August revote, a majority of workers rejected the CBA.

On Thursday, GM praised the vote as an "unprecedented democratic exercise" and vowed to cooperate SINTTIA according to law.

In a statement from her office, Tai said: "The historic vote this week to choose a union at the General Motors facility in Silao is a victory for workers."

"The USMCA's tools help protect collective bargaining rights and freedom of association for workers," she said. "The next, and equally critical, stage of the process will be good faith bargaining between General Motors and the new union. The United States will continue to work with our Mexican counterparts to protect the rights of workers"

President Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., said in a statement that the win was made possible by the USMCA and marked "a significant victory not only for workers in Mexico but around the world."

"Together, in a democratic union, workers will advocate for higher wages and improved health and safety standards at the Silao facility, helping to set new standards in the automobile industry," she said. "The election itself set a hard-won precedent and came only after workers voted to throw out a previous contract that had poor benefits and was negotiated without the workers' input."

Cars line up to be boarded onto a train at Nissan's plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico. (Photo by Ken Moriyasu)

Company-friendly unions have long been an issue in Mexico. While they have been blamed for low wages that squeeze workers, managers at auto plants quietly acknowledge that one of Mexico's biggest draws had been the absence of such hard-nosed unions as the United Auto Workers in the U.S.

Edward Alden, a visiting professor at Western Washington University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said this may be "the most successful example to date of effective enforcement of labor rights under a trade agreement."

When NAFTA took effect in 1994, the argument made by advocates was that expanded trade would strengthen the American economy. But while NAFTA pressed hard for free trade, it did little to address labor rights in Mexico, leaving a major wage gap between the U.S. and its southern neighbor.

NAFTA saw automakers rush to relocate manufacturing plants from the U.S. to Mexico to take advantage of the low wages and the now-removed tariffs.

"If you look at NAFTA, it was great at expanding trade, and did next to nothing on labor rights," Alden said. "There has been essentially no convergence of Mexican and U.S. wages over the past 30 years."

"So this unionization vote at the GM plant really matters, and should be seen as a real victory" for both former USTR Robert Lighthizer and Tai, he said.

But Alden noted that this formula may not apply outside North America, saying: "Mexico sends 85% of its exports to the U.S. and will agree to almost anything not to lose that access."

The Biden administration is working on an Indo-Pacific framework that would supplement the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose predecessor the U.S. pulled out from. The new framework "seems to include labor and environmental commitments but without any promise of greater access to the U.S. market," Alden said. "It's hard to see that producing much of anything."

ICYMI

Study provides first statistical characterisation of methane ultra-emitters from oil and gas

by Kayrros

Map showing the location of the main gas pipelines and the main sources of methane

 emissions related to the oil and gas industry.

 © Kayrros, Esri, HERE, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community. Credit: © Kayrros, Esri, HERE, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community

The journal Science today released a groundbreaking study of methane ultra-emitters linked to oil and gas activities that for the first time provides a statistical characterisation of these major drivers of climate change across various production activities.

The study, based on Kayrros data, shows a direct relationship (power law) between ultra-emitters monitored and measured from space and smaller methane leaks detected by local sensors and aircraft surveys.

Study contributor and Kayrros co-founder and scientific director, Alexandre d'Aspremont, said that their "study supplies a first systematic estimate of large methane leaks that can only be seen from space, showing how these detections relate to wider methane monitoring processes. This is a giant step towards overcoming the current limitations of the methane reporting system which is critical to meeting COP26 commitments to slash methane."

"Global oil and gas accounts for at least a quarter of human-made methane emissions, and recent studies provide mounting evidence that its emissions have been widely underestimated by conventional international UNFCCC protocols in the absence of a global monitoring system able to capture all oil and gas leaks."

Kayrros data scientists Clement Giron and Matthieu Mazzolini also participated in the study. Other co-authors include Thomas Lauvaux and Philippe Ciais of LSCE, Riley Duren and Daniel Cusworth of Carbon Mapper, and Drew Shindell of Duke University.

The Franco-American team of scientists performed a systematic analysis of thousands of images produced daily by the European Space Agency satellite mission Sentinel-5P to estimate the amount of methane released into the atmosphere by oil and gas production activities in 2019 and 2020.

"The actual number of ultra-emitters varies by country, but the relationship between the number of sources and their magnitude remains the same," said lead author Thomas Lauvaux, research scientist at the French Climate and Environmental Science Laboratory (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE).

"Intermittent emission events of 25 tons per hour or more can only be detected with monitoring satellites. These huge intermittent events that are normally undetectable consistently account for 8% to 12% of the overall methane emissions from oil and gas activities of any producing country."

The team used high-resolution atmospheric modeling and machine learning algorithms to detect and quantify hundreds of methane plumes. They then aggregated their emissions estimates at a national scale to evaluate the contribution of ultra-emitters to national reported emissions. To translate their results into a cost-benefit analysis, Shindell performed climate model simulations to quantify the additional contribution to climate change.

The team detected about 1,800 ultra-emitters (25 t/h or more) over the two years, of which roughly 1,200 come from oil and gas facilities and the remainder from a combination of coal mines, agriculture and waste management. Eliminating these oil-and-gas related events would be tantamount to removing 20 million cars from the road based on the 100-year global warming power (GWP100) of methane. Highlights from the study include:

• The study focused on six major oil and gas producing countries that together account for the majority of ultra-emitters identified through the processing of raw data from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) carried by Sentinel-5: Russia, Turkmenistan, U.S., Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria.
• Surveyed events range from a lower threshold of 25 t/h to plumes spread over hundreds of kilometers and released at a rate of several hundred t/h.
• 50 to 150 events detected per month on average.
• Based on adjusted emissions, oil and gas ultra-emitter estimates represent 8-12% of oil and gas methane emissions from national inventories, a contribution not included in current inventories.
• Eliminating these emissions is easily achievable.
• For the first time, the study quantifies the benefit of eliminating ultra-emitters. Estimates range from $6 billion for Turkmenistan and $4 billion for Russia to $400 million each for Kazakhstan and Algeria.
• Only monitoring satellites can systematically detect ultra-emitters. In-situ sensors and short aerial surveys can only detect smaller leaks. Tasking satellites also are constrained in their capacity to detect ultra-emitters by their low temporal resolution and limited geographical coverage. At lower emission rates, the number of emitters invisible to TROPOMI far surpasses visible ultra-emitters, however.
• While TROPOMI data help reveal hard-to-detect ultra-emitters, understanding the power-law distribution of these ultra-emitters also sheds light on the link between intermittent high-resolution imagery from aerial surveys and regular low-resolution images from TROPOMI. This goes a long way towards filling the gaps in oil-and-gas methane emission coverage and resolving the wide discrepancy between atmospheric measurements and bottom-up methane inventories.

"The staggering scale of these ultra-emitters and the huge benefit that would result from their elimination far exceed what we anticipated when Kayrros started investing in the development of our Methane Watch platform," said Antoine Rostand, Kayrros President and co-founder.

"However concerning the rate of methane emissions from oil and gas may be today, it is comforting to know that these emissions can, for the most part, easily be eliminated—and hugely gratifying to see that our research and our partnership with LSCE has been so rewarding and yielded such hugely beneficial results for the world."

"To our knowledge, this is the first worldwide study to estimate the amount of methane released into the atmosphere by maintenance operations and accidental releases," said Lauvaux.

"Unreported ultra-emitters explain in part the under-estimation in official O&G reported emissions by countries as documented by previous studies. The atmospheric monitoring approach enabled by recent satellite missions provides a unique perspective on O&G activities, and the potential to mitigate these large releases of methane."

Pr. Shindell said that they "find that capturing the methane from these ultra-emitters provides enormous benefits via reduced climate change and improved air quality, so that society as a whole would come out billions of dollars ahead by eliminating these ultra-emitters. As the captured methane is a valuable commodity, the companies or countries capturing the wasted gas also typically come out ahead."

"Our work on oil and gas is just the beginning," said Duren." The team will now look at methane emissions from coal extraction and farming activities thanks to several recent satellite missions. These instruments provide images at higher resolution but only cover parts of the globe at lower frequency, but with a higher detection limit than Sentinel-5P. The systematic aspect of satellite monitoring remains a key parameter for future monitoring."

"National greenhouse gas emissions rely primarily on self-reporting, while atmospheric data offers a more rigorous approach to emissions accounting, more independent and more transparent," Lauvaux added. "In the future, atmospheric measurements will play a more important role in mitigation policies by identifying actionable measures and by monitoring the implementation of climate actions."

Monitoring methane emissions from gas pipelines

More information: T. Lauvaux, Global Assessment of Oil and Gas Methane Ultra-Emitters, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abj4351. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj4351

Journal information: Science 

Provided by Kayrros