Job-seekers flood Kia supplier

At one point, the line snaked down the hill, circled an asphalt parking lot and trudged up the grass around the building.

As the morning stretched out, so did the line in LaGrange — evidence of both the deepening recession and urgent hope.

VINO WONG / vwong@ajc.com

Applicants wait in line with the hope of gaining one of 600 production and assembly positions at Sewon America in LaGrange Monday morning.

JOB-CUT ANNOUNCEMENTS SINCE SEPT. 1
Company, planned job cuts and date announced
• Home Depot: 7,000 (Jan. 26)
• Newell Rubbermaid: 800-1,000 (Dec. 17)
• Macy's: 850* (Feb. 2)
• Acuity Brands: 800 (Oct. 7)
• Panasonic: 500** (Sept. 5)
• Georgia Power: 300-400 (Jan. 14)
• Mohawk: 230*** (Oct. 2)
• Harland Clarke: 220 (Feb. 2)
* in metro Atlanta, part of larger cut nationally
** in Fayette County, more possible
*** announced 590 cuts earlier in year

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• Coping with a layoff

With two children to feed, the push for a paycheck is necessary, said Shirley Martin, 41, of Woodbury, who was laid off in December.

“I’d say I could go another month without a job — but I really can’t go a month.”

Like about a thousand others Monday, some of them arriving in the predawn, Martin was testing the odds. They waited for hours in a warm February sun for the chance to apply for $10-a-hour jobs in an auto supply plant that has not yet opened. About 300 jobs are to be filled by year’s end.

Like many around her, Martin was applying for an auto sector job after being laid off from a company in the sector.

The U.S. automotive industry has been hammered by the recession. Each drop in sales has meant less production, which has meant layoffs at assembly plants as well as the many suppliers. But in the LaGrange line, they hoped this was different.

It was, after all, a job fair for Sewon America, a Korean supplier.

Sewon, which has never before opened a plant outside Korea or China, will hire press operators and assemblers, as well as staff for shipping and receiving, quality control and other factory and office functions, said spokesman Henry Kim, through an interpreter.

The company has nearly completed a $170 million, 440,000-square-foot building in LaGrange, where it will make parts for Kia, which later this year is slated to open an auto assembly plant in West Point.

To Sewon, recession is a chance for an aggressive company to scrape market share from other, troubled firms, Kim said: “This is an opportunity for us.”

It is also an opportunity to be selective about potential employees. The jobless rate in the United States last month rose to 7.2 percent, dramatically higher than a year ago. Patrick Smith, 25, of Roanoke, Ala., has been jobless for about eight months. He stood patiently, impressed but not surprised by the crowd’s size.

“I think anywhere you go in America is like this,” he said.

Still, for the past year, the jobless rate in Georgia has been tracking even higher than the national average. December unemployment in the state was 8.1 percent.

The tilt in the labor market has corroded the power of some experienced, skilled workers to demand higher wages.

Douglas Current, 33, of LaGrange has been a press operator for about 15 years. He was laid off in the fall — around the time that his wife, Wendy, also lost her job.

“I had been making $15 an hour,” he said. “This would be a come-down but it is better than nothing. Is $10 an hour enough? It’s gonna have to be.”

That is, if he can land the job. State Labor Department officials said that 393,168 Georgians last month were looking for work in a market where job-seekers outnumber openings at least three to one.

The odds for workers were a lot worse than that Monday: About 300 positions will be filled this year, with hiring coming in batches. Another 300 will be hired by 2012, according to Kim.

Applications will be screened, with a group of candidates given closer scrutiny. That vetting will lead to “pre-employment” training, which will winnow the field still more. The first group of new employees — about 30 of them — will be hired in late March, Kim said.

The company will keep taking applications through Wednesday.

Manufacturing has hemorrhaged jobs for a decade, yet still accounts for about 10 percent of the state’s employment.

Manufacturing traditionally offered better-than-average pay to blue-collar workers, an entree for many into the middle class. Auto assembly, even plants without union representation, generally pays relatively well. But the chain of suppliers around those plants tends to pay less.

Delano Roseman, 26, of Stone Mountain knows the wage shift well: He was making more than $25 an hour at General Motors until being laid off last year when the Doraville plant shut down.

His wife still works, but with a child at home, he was not going to be put off by the distance to LaGrange, he said.

“I am not going to turn anything down.”

WHAT THEY SAID

“Most jobs, they want you to have experience but the things where you do have experience they are not hiring. It’s a no-win.”

— Donald Hardman, 55, of Columbus

“For the time being, I am doing the best I can. I don’t go anywhere. I save the gas, except when I am looking for a job.”

— Wanda Haney, 48, Heard County. Office worker laid off Dec. 31.

“Right now, I am looking for whatever will let me get by.”

— Wendy Current, 36, of LaGrange. Production inspector out of work for six months.

“You want a job to support your family.”

— Stokey Cheese, 33, of Columbus. Forklift operator out of work since mid-December.

“Maybe I get called back. Maybe I get a job here. Whatever happens. I can last awhile. I managed to save a bit. And I haven’t had a credit card in 15 years.”

— Kenneth Ward, 47, of LaGrange. Industrial electrician, out of work for about a month.

“Nobody is hiring.”

— Tametrius Brock, 19, of Lanett, Ala. Factory workers, out of work since September.

“I’ve been waiting here three hours.”

— Barb Ellis of LaGrange. Production worker, out of work several months.