Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9405270075
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He started in high school, working as a janitor at the Volvo GM Heavy Truck plant in Dublin for $5 an hour. He also took vocational classes in building trades at Pulaski County High School to punch up his skills.
``It helped me as far as getting a recommendation to get on full time here,'' Webb said of the janitor's job. ``That was my goal.''
After high school he got a job at Beach Manufacturing Co., a rubber stripping supplier for Volvo GM.
A year and a half ago, Webb put in an application at the heavy truck plant. Six months later, Volvo GM hired Webb to join 1,100 other union members to make custom-designed Volvo White trucks.
Now, at 26, Webb has joined the ranks of the fortunate laborers. Floor workers at Volvo GM average $15 an hour, or just over $31,000 a year.
When the truck plant's $200 million expansion is finished, Volvo GM will need more production workers, maybe as many as 200. But Webb knows those jobs won't be easy to get. As one of the few Western Virginia manufacturers adding workers, Volvo GM will be able to pick the most qualified applicants.
``It'll be a rush to get on here,'' Webb says. ``Whoever gets on here, they'll have a good job.''
Every year, respondents to the Roanoke Valley Poll - a joint project of this newspaper and Roanoke College - identify the creation of manufacturing jobs as the most important aspect of economic development. In the latest poll, 73 percent of those surveyed put manufacturing jobs at the top of the list.
But experts say the best Western Virginia can hope for is to hold onto the manufacturing jobs it has. The country as a whole isn't creating manufacturing jobs, and even regions like Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., that are successfully recruiting new plants often see those new jobs merely replacing others the area is losing.
The first half of 1994 has offered some encouragement to Western Virginians wanting production floor jobs:
Volvo GM announced last month it would add as many as 165 workers in boosting its daily production from 60 to 100 trucks.
Yokohama Tire in Salem is gradually adding workers in a $120 million decade-long expansion expected to increase its annual output to 6 million tires. Yokohama's long-range plan in Salem to to turn out 10 million tires annually.
Pulaski Furniture has completed a new plant that will add 130-160 manufacturing jobs.
Western Virginia, especially the New River Valley, is known statewide as a manufacturing center. In fact, nearly 30 percent of the jobs in the four-county New River Valley are in manufacturing, a number that exceeds the national average by half.
So ends the unqualified good news. Everything else comes with a ``but.''
Plants in the New River Valley have lately added to their work forces, and Michael Hensley at Virginia Tech's Economic Development Assistance Center says the valley might be able to hang onto its manufacturing work force. But until 15 years ago, close to 45 percent of the New River Valley's work force was in manufacturing. Now, that number has dropped to under 30 percent.
``Those days aren't going to return,'' Hensley says. ``We'll never see manufacturing that dominant again in the region. Frankly, there just aren't as many manufacturing jobs as there were 15 years ago.''
Western Virginia's share of the state's manufacturing work force will continue to increase, but not because it is adding goods-producing jobs - only because the rest of the state is losing them more quickly.
Along those lines, Christine Chmura, an economist with Crestar Bank in Richmond, says one thing the region has going for it is something it lacks: a lot of defense industry jobs. Eastern Virginia will continue to struggle with its defense-based economy, a problem that by and large this region doesn't have.
So what does Western Virginia's future in manufacturing look like?
Look around, the experts say. Whatever the region has now is likely what it'll have in the near future. No more. With some luck, maybe no less.
Doing more with less
None of this means Western Virginians won't continue to churn out furniture, tires, trucks and hundreds of other goods at record levels. It only means a decades-long employment enemy is helping companies make those goods with fewer workers.
That job-creation villain - technology driven automation - keeps manufacturers efficient in their use of both materials and labor. If producers want to stay in business, the infamous 1990s creed of ``doing more with less'' is a must.
Pulaski Furniture, for instance, started making furniture two weeks ago at a new state-of-the-art factory that would have needed 300 people to operate it just 10 years ago, plant manager Jim Stout said. Now, half that many can make the same number of curio and gun cabinets - less expensively and with less lumber.
``The machinery is very capable, a lot of it is computerized, some of it isn't,'' Stout says. ``It's not just labor we're getting more out of. Every resource in the plant is used more efficiently. Everything was aimed at producing either a better product or better man-hour production.''
As Pulaski Furniture approaches its 40th year in the New River Valley, its 2,250 employees make it the region's largest manufacturing employer. Pulaski thinks its new plant - the first all-new facility it has built since 1973 - makes its line of occasional furniture more competitive with others in the industry.
Furniture ordered from the new plant will have a six-day lead time, besting the industry's standard lead time of three to four weeks.
But President John Wampler knows efficiency made possible through automation and specializing in a just a few products comes with a potential downside.
``There's a peril to this efficiency,'' Wampler says. ``If you're not smart enough to pick a line of products that has longevity, then woe be you.''
Like other manufacturers who hire these days, Pulaski Furniture didn't just pick its workers from those standing in the unemployment line. It takes certain skills to run the machinery, and workers at the new plant had to prove their merit before being hired.
Pulaski sent job-seekers to a four-night course at New River Community College, which tested them through crash courses in reading blueprints, basic math and team-building. Pulaski intentionally avoided hiring the bulk of its new workforce from the ranks of ``old-line furniture manufacturing,'' Stout says.
``We felt like we could teach them the technical side,'' he says of the new employees, ``but we wanted to bring them in and teach them cooperation, teamwork and the concept of quality.''
That teamwork, with the help of new machinery, helped Pulaski create new jobs in Western Virginia. But not as many as a new factory would have added years ago.
Choosing from the cream
The $16 an hour jobs at BMW's new plant in South Carolina and the $17.50 an hour jobs at Yokohama Tire in Salem aren't mythical, but they are overused anecdotes.
Mark Schweitzer, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and research assistant Max Dupuy in a recent commentary peeled away the anecdotal evidence that service-sector jobs are inferior to manufacturing jobs.
Schweitzer and Dupuy found that just as ``hamburger flipping'' jobs aren't typical of service-sector work, $16 an hour jobs at BMW aren't representative of all manufacturing jobs.
In fact, their study's findings have attracted national attention: partly because the study shatters the perception that manufacturing jobs pay vastly more than service jobs; partly because it offers hope to a country in which 72 percent of the population holds a service-sector job.
The study found that in 1992 a median-paid service-sector worker brought home just $19 per week less than a median-paid production line worker. There is of course a foundation for the perception that the service jobs offer inferior pay: Just 15 years ago, midlevel service jobs paid $82 less per week than midlevel manufacturing jobs.
``People associate manufacturing with the higher paying manufacturers out there,'' Schweitzer says. ``Primary metals, steelworkers, automobile manufacturers, and not just BMW.''
But Schweitzer points out all manufacturers don't pay as well as Yokohama Tire or Volvo GM. Textile, apparel and furniture manufacturers aren't typically known for high wages. ``Those have never been high-paying,'' Schweitzer says, ``and they certainly aren't today.
``At the same time,'' he adds, ``I don't want to sound like I'm critical of those places; if the workers didn't feel like they were among their best alternatives, they wouldn't be there.''
Comparing salaries between service and manufacturing jobs, Schweitzer says, loses track of the broad disparity within the sectors. While a low-end manufacturing job pays about $231 weekly, for instance, a high-end manufacturing job pays more than $1,000 weekly.
The continuing comparison between, say, pay at fast-food jobs and at automobile manufacturers also takes focus away from the main issue: low-skill and minimal education translates to low pay.
Perhaps behind the desire of Roanoke Valley residents for more manufacturing jobs is a finding of the study: the biggest pay disparity between service and goods-producing jobs is among workers with only a high-school degree. Schweitzer and Dupuy found the median pay for a high school graduate in a goods-producing job was $77 more per week than the median pay for a high school graduate in a service sector job.
In order to reach the higher-paying jobs in either sector, workers will have to tailor their education and job experience to the skills employers are seeking.
When Volvo GM starts hiring later this summer, human resources supervisor Bruce Jennings knows he'll be able to pick workers who are the cream of the region's work force.
``They're not just going to announce, `We're going to pay $15 an hour,' then take a lottery from those who show up,'' Schweitzer correctly predicts. ``They're going to take a look at the mass of people who show up and sift out the best workers.''
Five years ago when Volvo GM announced it would hire 300 floor workers, more than 7,200 people showed up to apply. The day the plant accepted applications, cars were backed up at 5 a.m. on Interstate 81.
``Man, they broke the doors coming in,'' Jennings recalls. ``They camped out overnight. Now, we learned our lesson; we're processing all our applications through the employment commission.''
Kurt Webb went about it the right way. With the number of manufacturing jobs in Western Virginia expected to remain static, others who want a job like Webb's at Volvo GM will have to follow a similar path:
Work hard. Develop skills. Get in line. And wait.
by CNB