A new start-up organization hopes to set up shop in Chatham County where the company would build affordable, eco-friendly workforce homes and create more than 100 new jobs here.

Representatives of Advanced-Built Homes (ABH) poke Monday with the Chatham County Board of Commissioners about their plans, which call for manufacturing the first totally green, sustainable dwellings for lower income buyers, using geothermal energy for heating and cooling and solar energy for electricity.

"We’re trying to be at the leading edge of what we believe is a new paradigm for affordable housing," said company president Vincent Ciccarello.

ABH is shovel-ready, but needs financing, Ciccarello said.

Once financing is secure, the company can produce its first house in 14 months. Each home takes approximately four weeks to complete.

ABH is currently seeking both private and public funding.

The facility would create from day one approximately 100 manufacturing jobs, Ciccarello said, paying approximately $14 per hour.

Most of the jobs would require unskilled labor.

more- See

Jennifer Kim reaches behind the counter at Snack Stop convenience store in Pittsboro and pulls out a glass jar filled with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.

"People used to pay with cash, but lately more and more people have been paying with change," Kim said.

"They are robbing their own piggy banks because the jobs are gone," Kim said. "People cannot afford to buy what they need anymore."

Kim, like many others in the state, daily feels the effects of a burgeoning jobless class – a group, according to new figures, that continues to escalate by the numbers.

According to the Employment Security Commission (ESC), unemployment rates continued to increase in all but one of North Carolina’s 100 counties in February.

An area businessman has purchased the former Boling Chair industrial buildings in downtown Siler City with plans to restore them and return them to use.

Shane Blakeslee, who lives in eastern Chatham County and operates a successful Durham-based business selling vintage issues of Life magazine, plans to renovate the buildings and later establish a Life magazine museum as well as a photojournalism hall of fame in one of them.

One of the buildings currently houses several business tenants and a church. The adjacent, three-story structure, which is vacant and badly in need of extensive renovations, may eventually house the museum and hall of fame.

The eight-month strike at the Moncure Plywood plant ended last week, after a new three-year contract gave union workers most of what they wanted.

But it was a bittersweet victory since only 25 strikers out of about 110 are guaranteed to go back to work this week.

And in a tragic turn of events, one of the 25, James Thomas, died of a massive heart attack the day after the contract was ratified.

But in spite of these circumstances, the outcome was a considered a big victory by union organizers.

Lewis Cameron, a 35-year employee of the company and local president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said the company finally bowed to pressure from the community and N.C. Congressional delegation.

"It was pressure from all the community people," he said, "and a letter from Congressman Bob Etheridge, Mel Watts, seven of them, all from North Carolina."

Representatives of the company released a statement that did not mention this outside pressure.

"This agreement is the product of good faith and determination by the IAM and Moncure Plywood to bring an end to the first strike in the history of this company and to make this mill a stronger, more agile competitor in the most challenging economic environment we have ever faced," said Jeff Matuszak of Moncure Plywood in the statement. "This negotiation, as challenging as it was, has helped all of us — labor, management and employees — recognize clearly that the future of this mill relies on our working together every day to provide our customers with the lowest-cost mix of specialty plywood products."

Tim Fazio, Managing Partner of Atlas continued, "Over the last 10 years, Atlas Holdings has forged a strong, positive working relationship with the approximately 10 unions and 17 locals that represent employees at our businesses. Indeed, the mutually beneficial alliances we have formed with organized labor have helped us create or save hundreds of jobs in troubled businesses."

Cameron said he found out about the decision Friday, March 27, and the union was satisfied that its key demands were met.

The workweek limit was brought back down to 50 hours from 60, except up to 56 hours in cases of strong need, and then only using the least senior workers.

The seniority system for determining promotions was kept intact. And workers with the most seniority will be the first to return to work.

eduction in health insurance costs that would have tripled under the contract proposed by Atlas Holdings, the parent company of Moncure Plywood.

The end of the strike brought more good news for the picketers.