Toyota Gets 9,600 Apps for Jobs at Restarted Mississippi Plant
By Bill Visnic August 31, 2010In a signal not only that jobs in the current economy are precious but that auto manufacturing jobs apparently still carry weight, in the first week after announcing it was accepting applications for hourly workers at its restarted assembly plant in Blue Springs, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi Inc. has been inundated with about 9,500 applications for the approximately 1,350 hourly jobs at the site.
Construction of the Blue Springs plant, started in 2007 but suspended in 2008 when the economy soured, recently was restarted in order to build the Corolla compact car starting next year.
The plant originally was earmarked to be the first-ever U.S. source for Toyota's Prius hybrid-electric vehicle, but after shaky Prius sales during the recession and Toyota's decision to shutter the plant in Fremont, CA, that recently built the Corolla and Matrix, the company announced in June a plan to finish the TMMM plant and build the Corolla there.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports starting pay will be in the $15- to $20-per-hour range, with applications in the first week coming from 33 states, including Michigan and California. About 8,000 of the total applications came from Mississippi and there will be about 150 salaried jobs at the Blue Springs plant.
Despite the influx of applications for the Toyota plant, some sources say automakers nonetheless are competing for qualified workers in the region, thanks to the construction of several new plants within a comparatively small radius, including the recently started Kia Motors America plant in West Point, GA, and a new Volkswagen Group assembly plant coming on stream next year in Chattanooga, TN.
For the Toyota Blue Springs site, most workers will live locally. "Typically, the majority of the work force will come within an hour's drive," David Copenhaver, vice president of administration, told the newspaper.
Photo by Toyota
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