US: Nearly 17000 show up to try for Ford jobs in Louisville

USA TODAY - Some 16,837 people showed up at the local Kentucky Office of Employment & Training in the past week seeking jobs at Ford's Louisville Assembly Plant.

The deadline was today to submit an application and a lottery tomorrow picks who gets to go on for consideration by Ford for the jobs paying $15.51 per hour. The number who'll advance via the lottery wasn't disclosed.

Sadly, the odds are that very few of these folks will become one of the 1,800 more workers Ford says it needs to reopens the plant in November with 2,900 on two shifts building the redesigned Escape crossover SUV.

The jobs can be claimed first by Ford workers laid off in Louisville or at Ford plants elsewhere in North America.

Also the lottery may have up to 5,000 more people in it. Each of the 5,000 active UAW Ford workers in the Louisville area got referral slips for the lottery that they could pass to potential applicants among their family and friends , Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans said.

Ford will consider lottery winners' qualifications, conduct a math tests and other screenings, do background checks and interview to make hires. The lottery begins tomorrow at 7 a.m. at the Louisville plant.

Given the economy, the number of job seekers is not surprising:

"That tells you something," said James Atkinson, a former lineworker at Louisville Assembly who now is a career counselor at the University of Louisville. Many Ford applicants are likely seeking to upgrade from lower wage jobs. "There are still a lot of people who are underemployed or unemployed," he said.

The new Ford jobs pay about half the wages of veteran UAW Ford workers. Health benefits begin for new workers after eight months on the job.

Steven M. Stone, the UAW building chairman at the Ford plant said the number of applicants was easily anticipated, even at the lower, second tier beginning wage that's about half what veteran union members at the plant are paid. "Those are good jobs even though they are `two tier'."

Perhaps the biggest concession UAW workers made in recent years was the creation of the second tier of lower paid workers to comprise, in Ford's contract, no more than 20% itss U.S. workforce. The Louisville Assembly Plant will be among the first in Ford's system to employ a two-tier workforce.

The second-tier wage of more than $15 hourly still is double the minimum wage "and could help a lot of people," applicant Kimberly Carter, a 45-year-old cosmetologist, said as she applied today for one of the jobs with her daughter Lubbrea Carter, 21.

Unemployed Somali immigrant Anab Rashid, 27, said she heard news of the Ford hiring on the radio. "I just want a job," said Rashid, adding she emigrated to the U.S. in 2000.

"I hope I get lucky," said Brad Bell, 32, adding he worked part time shuttling packages at United Parcel Service for a decade and is now jobless and living in his childhood home in Shively, Ky.