This should have been national news. Maybe it's the start of a trend. This is my local paper here in Bowling Green, KY. At least there is some good coming from high fuel prices. I'm not including a link because it's archived and you either have to be a subscriber or pay to read it.
[FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=+1]Hundreds of jobs returning
Outsourced to China a few years ago, DESA bringing work, money back to Bowling Green [/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=-1] JUSTIN STORY, The Daily News, jstory@bgdailynews.com[/SIZE]
[FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=-1]Published: July 16, 2008
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=-1]It’s rare to see a manufacturer celebrate when several hundred jobs are moved between a U.S. factory and a foreign plant.
But employees at DESA International on Industrial Drive had reason to cheer Tuesday when it was announced that the Bowling Green plant is set to regain hundreds of jobs that had previously been outsourced to China.
Work at the plant was suspended temporarily Tuesday afternoon for a visit from Gov. Steve Beshear and several local elected and DESA officials to announce that DESA Heating Operations will move its manufacturing production back to Warren County.
Beshear said the development was the result of months of meetings between the governor’s economic development cabinet and company officials.
“This represents a reversal of direction,” Beshear said before about 600 cheering DESA employees. “This is a relocation of jobs in the local economy, but not the relocation we have gotten used to over the past several years.”
Charles Schaut, vice president of human resources for DESA, said the jobs are concentrated in sheet metal fabrication, painting and light assembly in the company’s heating products division.
DESA is working with temporary employment agency Manpower to find people to fill the new jobs – approximately 400, according to city documents.
“This week we have had 51 new employees start in the positions through the help of Manpower,” Schaut said. “We want to have all the positions filled by mid-August, so we’re ramping up at a rapid rate.”
The employees will be at DESA on a temporary status for their first 60 days there, at which point they will become eligible to join the Sheet Metal Workers Local 433 and become full-time employees, eligible to receive health and life insurance benefits, Schaut said.
A new assembly line will be added and other lines that had been shut down will be restarted to accommodate the new hires, according to Schaut.
Schaut could not say how much money DESA would save by bringing the manufacturing jobs to Bowling Green, but many of the officials who spoke Tuesday said that the expanded operations would create a capital investment of about $6.4 million in the state.
Claude Hayes, president of DESA’s retail heating division, said several factors have worked to bring Asian manufacturing jobs – outsourced about three years ago – back to Kentucky.
Hayes noted that the continuing rise in oil prices had vastly increased the cost to ship finished goods from China to Bowling Green.
With the manufacturing operation returning to the U.S., a shipment that would normally take six to eight weeks to travel from China to one of DESA’s clients can now be moved in a day.
“Freight costs that had been $3,600 last year increased to $5,200 in January,” Hayes said. “Today, the cost is at $5,400 and may be as much as $5,600 by the end of the month.”
In addition to rising transportation costs tied to fuel prices, a recent rise in wages for Chinese workers and a weak U.S. dollar made for an exchange rate that created more economically favorable conditions for domestic manufacturing.
Beshear said the reimportation of the jobs at DESA was emblematic of the state’s strategy to strengthen its manufacturing economy by working closely with established companies.
“We can create many more new jobs faster by working with those (companies) we have and doing well by those we have so they can expand,” Beshear said.
The governor said that 13.5 percent of Kentucky’s work force was in manufacturing as recently as 2006, and that the state’s manufacturing economy accounted for 97 percent of its exports and 18.7 percent of the state’s gross domestic produce – about $27 billion each year.
“We are happy to export our goods, but we are particularly happy to import the jobs,” Beshear said. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=+1]Hundreds of jobs returning
Outsourced to China a few years ago, DESA bringing work, money back to Bowling Green [/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=-1] JUSTIN STORY, The Daily News, jstory@bgdailynews.com[/SIZE]
[FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=-1]Published: July 16, 2008
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=-1]It’s rare to see a manufacturer celebrate when several hundred jobs are moved between a U.S. factory and a foreign plant.
But employees at DESA International on Industrial Drive had reason to cheer Tuesday when it was announced that the Bowling Green plant is set to regain hundreds of jobs that had previously been outsourced to China.
Work at the plant was suspended temporarily Tuesday afternoon for a visit from Gov. Steve Beshear and several local elected and DESA officials to announce that DESA Heating Operations will move its manufacturing production back to Warren County.
Beshear said the development was the result of months of meetings between the governor’s economic development cabinet and company officials.
“This represents a reversal of direction,” Beshear said before about 600 cheering DESA employees. “This is a relocation of jobs in the local economy, but not the relocation we have gotten used to over the past several years.”
Charles Schaut, vice president of human resources for DESA, said the jobs are concentrated in sheet metal fabrication, painting and light assembly in the company’s heating products division.
DESA is working with temporary employment agency Manpower to find people to fill the new jobs – approximately 400, according to city documents.
“This week we have had 51 new employees start in the positions through the help of Manpower,” Schaut said. “We want to have all the positions filled by mid-August, so we’re ramping up at a rapid rate.”
The employees will be at DESA on a temporary status for their first 60 days there, at which point they will become eligible to join the Sheet Metal Workers Local 433 and become full-time employees, eligible to receive health and life insurance benefits, Schaut said.
A new assembly line will be added and other lines that had been shut down will be restarted to accommodate the new hires, according to Schaut.
Schaut could not say how much money DESA would save by bringing the manufacturing jobs to Bowling Green, but many of the officials who spoke Tuesday said that the expanded operations would create a capital investment of about $6.4 million in the state.
Claude Hayes, president of DESA’s retail heating division, said several factors have worked to bring Asian manufacturing jobs – outsourced about three years ago – back to Kentucky.
Hayes noted that the continuing rise in oil prices had vastly increased the cost to ship finished goods from China to Bowling Green.
With the manufacturing operation returning to the U.S., a shipment that would normally take six to eight weeks to travel from China to one of DESA’s clients can now be moved in a day.
“Freight costs that had been $3,600 last year increased to $5,200 in January,” Hayes said. “Today, the cost is at $5,400 and may be as much as $5,600 by the end of the month.”
In addition to rising transportation costs tied to fuel prices, a recent rise in wages for Chinese workers and a weak U.S. dollar made for an exchange rate that created more economically favorable conditions for domestic manufacturing.
Beshear said the reimportation of the jobs at DESA was emblematic of the state’s strategy to strengthen its manufacturing economy by working closely with established companies.
“We can create many more new jobs faster by working with those (companies) we have and doing well by those we have so they can expand,” Beshear said.
The governor said that 13.5 percent of Kentucky’s work force was in manufacturing as recently as 2006, and that the state’s manufacturing economy accounted for 97 percent of its exports and 18.7 percent of the state’s gross domestic produce – about $27 billion each year.
“We are happy to export our goods, but we are particularly happy to import the jobs,” Beshear said. [/SIZE][/FONT]
