Hooray! Jobs!

Good news:

• Ford Motor Co. plans to add 1,200 workers when it begins production of a new version of the Ford Explorer SUV at its Torrence Avenue plant on Chicago's South Side later this year.
  

But there's a catch:

• Those new union workers will be the first hired by Ford at sharply reduced wages, under a 2007 contract that allows Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to fill some jobs at about half the pay of what current workers made when they started, and with lower benefits, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

And there's another catch, too:

• As many as half of the new Chicago hires may come from a pool of laid-off Ford workers in southeast Michigan and Louisville, said Jim Tetreault, vice president of North America manufacturing.
  
  "Our workers that are on indefinite layoff right now, no matter where they are in the country, get first choice," he said. "We have approximately 600 people on layoff, so we expect some percentage of those employees will elect to take a position in Chicago."

So a mixed blessing we suppose. We thought SUVs were on the way out?