Retirements, buyouts to create openings, some in Toledo area
March 28, 2008
If all this bleak economic weather has you down, if the flurry of foreclosures and the pounding job losses have left you pining for a brighter horizon, here's a ray of hope from auto experts up north: Don't think spring, think fall.
A recent study by experts at the University of Michigan said the three Detroit-based automakers will need tens of thousands of new employees in coming years, and may start hiring as soon as six months from now. And at least some of those new jobs will be in northwest Ohio.
"We're hearing that [General Motors Corp.] will probably have to hire between 10,000 and 15,000 people corporate-wide, based on numbers" that take the current buyout package, said Ray Wood, president of United Auto Workers Local 14.
UAW Local 12 President Bruce Baumhower has said he expects Chrysler LLC to begin hiring again over the next few years to replace the more than 600 workers at its Toledo Jeep Assembly complex who have taken buyouts.
Automakers - especially GM, Ford Motor Co., and Chrysler - have an older work force that will soon need to be replaced, a study last month by the Center for Automotive Research at UM found.
Even though factories continue to make huge strides in efficiency, more than 56,000 people are expected to be hired over the next three years, and 77,000 by 2016.
But don't start lining up, resume in hand, at the factory gates just yet. Many of the hiring predictions are predicated on the notion that consumers will once again start buying domestic automobiles, production of which is expected to fall below 15 million units this year.
The average age of the 1,800 workers at GM's Toledo Powertrain plant on Alexis Road is 48 to 50, said Mr. Wood, whose local represents them.
"Maybe not initially with the [buyouts], but because we're transitioning to two new products, plus with the buyouts, we're anticipating hiring some new people down the line."
Chrysler spokesman Ed Saenz said the privately held automaker was still in the process of persuading 10,000 of its employees to accept buyout offers, and couldn't speak about how many it might have to hire. Chrysler operates both the Toledo Jeep Assembly complex in north Toledo and the Toledo Machining plant in Perrysburg Township.
"It's a period of great change here, and we're in the midst of it," Mr. Saenz said.
These won't be your father's UAW jobs. The new labor contract between the three Detroit automakers and the union cut in half many of the wages for new hires, from an average of $28 an hour to about $14.
The new contract also eliminated participation in the defined benefit pension plans that current auto workers have, in favor of a 401(k) that requires the employee to divert wages toward retirement.
With few exceptions, the new jobs with the domestic automakers will require at least some college education, if not at least an associate's degree or its technical equivalent, just to work on the line.
That's already the case at the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance plants in Dundee, Mich., where 212 workers make more than 420,000 engines a year in a two-year-old plant that is one of the most productive facilities in North America.
"Smart people are productive people," explained Bruce Coventry, president of the Dundee factories. Workers at the facility are unionized and represented by the UAW and, thus far, aren't covered by the two-tiered wage system approved last fall for workers at Ford, GM, and Chrysler plants.
Although workers in Dundee are paid higher wages than even current auto workers, increased automation allows the plant to produce at an extremely high level of efficiency, Mr. Coventry explained.
"But because we're so productive," he said, "our labor content is so low that we're literally selling engines from Dundee, Mich., in China right now because they're cheaper to produce here than they would be over there."
The globalization of the automotive industry will change the jobs of those who put vehicles and parts of vehicles together, said Thomas Naughton, associate chairman of the business department at Wayne State University in Detroit.
"The idea of a narrowly defined work force in one small town just isn't going to happen anymore," he said.
Dundee's Mr. Coventry said all the domestic automakers will use the opportunities brought about by their large manpower turnovers to rapidly increase the productivity of their plants, making them look more like his.
"If we [in North America] are going to compete, we have to compete with a different business model," he said.
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