The process of hiring people to build the highly popular Toyota Camry vehicle at Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc. in Lafayette has begun.
That's good news for Christal McDuffie, who started working at the plant as a temporary employee last August.
"I got hired on permanently in February. It's a great place to work, it's a good opportunity. They have great benefits," said McDuffie, a high school graduate who attended college for two years. "It definitely is hard. You work for your money. They have a wellness program and care about our fitness, but it definitely is hard work."
McDuffie is working on the Subaru production line, replacing an associate who has been shifted to the new Toyota assembly line, where the first vehicles are to be rolled off next month.
After the Toyota production hiring plans were announced, 18,142 people filled out applications for employment at SIA through an online process established by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
From the completed applications, nearly 4,300 people were referred to SIA for consideration.
Those large numbers don't surprise Joe DiLaura, press secretary for the IDWD.
"There's certainly been a lot of interest in the Toyota Camry line," he said. "And we've seen a spate of layoffs in the automotive industry, so it makes sense from that standpoint."
Just before moving here, McDuffie had lived in Oregon for five years, where she worked as a staffing supervisor for an employment agency. "I put people to work. We did a lot with construction -- carpenters, framers and some production jobs," said McDuffie, who did production work at Wabash National Corp. in Lafayette for seven years before moving to Oregon. "It's definitely different on the car side than the trailer side."
Learning new skills
At this stage in the process, 94 full-time production associates have been hired and are being trained for Toyota production. Ten of those people will be team leaders, and an additional 64 administrative associates have been hired.
"In September we expect to have hired approximately 650 full- time production associates," said SIA spokeswoman Ann McConnell. "At that time, we expect to have approximately 450 temporary production workers."
SIA also anticipates hiring 28 additional administrative associates, bringing that number to 92.
SIA employs nearly 2,500 associates. Wages for production workers start around $15 an hour and increase to around $24 an hour after three years.
Nathan Feltman, Indiana Secretary of Commerce and president of the Indiana Economic Development Corp., said landing the Toyota project for SIA required "a ton of work" that is beginning to pay dividends.
"There are a lot of under-employed people in Indiana ... who could be doing a higher skilled job," Feltman said. "I think we're going to move people up the skilled value chain and help them get higher pay.
"We reached out to Toyota within the first few months of Gov. (Mitch) Daniels taking office in 2005. We've just had a great relationship with them and ended up with a great win."
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