More than 100 local business, education and goverment leaders packed a conference room at the Stoney Creek Inn this morning for the unveiling of a workforce plan that was nearly two years in the making.

For highlights of the strategic plan, designed to realign skills of the area workforce with the needs of employers, check out my coverage from today.

To read the entire plan, click http://rig.witcc.edu

Let me know what you think about the plan. Do you agree with the recommendations? If not, what would you suggest instead?

If you haven’t read it already, check out my story on the latest development involving Sand Creek Post & Beam, the Wayne, Neb.-based maker of kits for old-fashioned barns. The story appeared in print Sunday, but due to a technical issue, was not posted online until today, “Sales aloft”

I first visited owners Len Dickinson and Jule Goeller in October 2006, about two years after they moved from Lincoln to Wayne and launched their business. That story, with the catchy headline “Barn Again, , was awarded a first-place award for business writing the next year in the Iowa Associated Press Managing Editors contest.

A framed copy of that story now hangs in the conference room of Sand Creek’s new offices in downtown Wayne. The company, after outgrowing their cramped leased offices, acquired a former bank and drug store building dating from the turn-of-the-century and extensively renovated it. The interior decor features rustic, rough-cut wood and other materials they use in their business.

Earlier this summer, more than 350 local residents turned out for a BBQ brisket luncheon the company hosted to show off their new digs.

Since my last visit, Sand Creek also has tripled the size of their plant on the east side of Wayne. The company’s barns are now sold in 44 states and counting. The dizzying sales increases from 2005 to 2008 landed the firm on Inc. magazine’s annual list of the 500 fastest-growing, privately-held U.S. businesses.

Nebraska meatpacking workers routinely face hazardous conditions, including unrelenting line speed, humiliating treatment and verbal abuse, according to a report from a non-profit public interest law center released today.
For the report, Lincoln-based Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest interviewed 455 workers at eight plants in five communities. The group did not identify the identify the companies or communities, but reportedly talked to some workers at Tyson Foods’ Dakota City beef plant, the metro area’s largest employer with some 3,400 employees.

Of the total workers interviewed, Appleeseed said 62 percent of reported they had been injured during their previous year at work. That’s a higher rate of injury than official government statistics.

To read the full 104-page report, click here.

Read the Journal online and in print Thursday for local reaction to the Appleseed report.

Like its larger neighbor across the Missouri River, South Sioux City also was once in the running for the Siemens Energy wind turbine plant. Nobody publicly reported that fact until today.

Hutchinson, Kan. was selected today for the $50 million project, beating out second-place finisher Sioux City.

South Sioux City officials declined to discuss their bid, other than to say they offered Siemens a site in the city’s new Roth Industrial Park.

Ho-Chunk Inc., the economic development arm of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, was profiled in PBS program that aired on three nights this week.

PBS’s Nightly Business News featured the tribal enterprise in a series, “Native American Entrepreneurs,” which focuses on Native Americans making a difference in the business world. The series was a companion piece to “We Shall Remain,” a multi-part prime-time series billed as a multi-media history of Native Americans from PBS’s American Experience.

The segment on Ho-Chunk characterizes the Winnebago as a tribe that is forging its own entrepreneurial path, running many successful business ventures. The program included an interview with John Blackhawk, Winnebago Tribal chairman who speaks about the beginnings of HCI and the positive changes that entrepreneurial development have brought about in the community as he walks through the Ho-Chunk Village.

Also interviewed was HCI chief operating officer Annette Hamilton, who discussed the importance of “taking care of yourself and taking care of your own future and creating your own destiny.”

To view the Native American Entrepreneurs” program segment featuring Ho-Chunk in its entirety online, click here.

For information on PBS’s “We Shall Remain” series, click here.