Auto Jobs: Sign of the Times

CNBC ^ | 05-30-12 | By: Phil LeBeau

[Red Badger]

It should not come as a surprise with unemployment over 8% that good paying jobs in manufacturing are harder than ever to land.

At the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama more than 20,000 people have applied for one of the 877 job openings.

The surge of people applying may seem unusual, but it's not.

Take a look:

Last summer Ford had more than 18,000 people apply for one of 1,800 jobs at the retooled Louisville plant. That plant will open and start building the Edge SUV in mid-June. In 2011, more than 41,000 applied for one of the 1,300 positions at the new Toyota plant in Tupelo, Mississippi. In 2009, more than 65,000 applied for one of the 2,700 jobs at the new Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN. Since opening, that plant has added shifts and is currently hiring another 820 workers.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Been hiring like crazy at our auto mfg plant in central KY - biggest problem is finding people that can pass drug screen and/or background checks.

[Hojczyk]

I though the auto jobs in the south sucked??? Guess the press is wrong again

[Buckeye McFrog]

I though the auto jobs in the south sucked???

Actually the pay is on-par with the UAW shops. It just does not come with the unsustainable benefits or the ability to be protected from firing so you can tell your boss to go f*** himself every day.

Most of the people who get these jobs are quite happy with them.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Buckeye’s exactly right. The union’s have been salivating to get in at one of our plants in central KY. We work a ton of OT because we’re over capacity on most of our production lines...we literally can’t keep up with customer demand. The plus side is that a machine operator with a GED and clean record can make $50-$55k a year with OT. The downside is that it’s hard to work a 12-hr schedule 6 and sometimes 7 days a week.

So, the unions see it as a golden ticket in, and have been trying for a long time to get our employees interested with the promise of shorter work-weeks, higher pay, etc. The good thing is that our pay and benefits are already awesome, so there’s not a lot of interest on the employee’s part to listen to what the union salts have to say. The younger generation is more apt to listen, but the older dogs have seen what unions have done and want no part of it.