Plenty of work, but finding enough people to do it is tough job

Editor's note: This story is part of a special "Help Wanted" section running in the Oct. 4 edition that details the lengths auto companies are going to find new workers.

The auto industry has been talking about "reshoring" in recent years as if it were a kind of patriotic movement — pulling manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from China, Indonesia and Mexico as way to bolster the American economy.

Garry Craft wishes it were that simple.

"We just transferred a lot of business from Mexico to our plant in Gadsden, Ala., because the company there couldn't get enough people to do the work," said Craft, director of sales at Koller-Craft South. "They were having problems getting employees. And once their product got to the border, the trucks were sitting there for five to seven days because of staffing issues at the border."

Koller-Craft, a Tier 2 molder and assembler of components that include interior trim pieces, decorative parts, cupholder assemblies and door handle assemblies, is adding 15 to 20 people to its 170-employee Gadsden plant to absorb the extra work.

Cross-border shipments have been a vexing issue for suppliers such as Koller-Craft since long before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in early 2020. The Trump administration's U.S.-China trade war introduced new unknowns into global supply chains in 2018. Tariffs on steel imports additionally changed some supply chain equations. And border shutdowns and congestion from the pandemic further complicated logistics.

But suppliers in many areas say this year's main issue has been simply having enough workers to make parts and move them to their customers.

"It's just being able to get truck drivers," said Craft, whose name is coincidental to his employer's. "There are times when we've had to call our customer and say, 'We will not be able to get a truck out today because we can't get a truck driver. We will get a truck tomorrow.' "

The industry already was fretting over a truck driver shortage before the pandemic came along. But then it worsened. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that U.S. trucking employment has not come back from its pandemic dip and remains more than 30,000 people below its February 2020 headcount.

Staffing and logistics challenges also raise quality flags in a supply chain, Craft added.

"We've had some quality problems with companies that never had them before," he said. "And it's because they've lost some of their experienced talent. New employees come in who have to learn the product from the ground up."

The labor shortage was intensified this year by the pandemic and the ensuing stream of federal unemployment benefits, Craft said. But he also knows that some regions of the country were struggling with worker demand before COVID-19 arrived and will still be struggling with it as the industry works its way back to normal conditions.

Alabama, where one of Koller-Craft's plants operates, has experienced a tidal wave of auto manufacturing investments in recent years, and some locations in the state — as well as in nearby Georgia and South Carolina — were showing signs of a tight labor pool. In August, even as the U.S. industry continued running below capacity, Alabama reported an unemployment rate of just 3.1 percent, vs. 5.2 percent for the nation as a whole, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Last week, one of Alabama's biggest automotive employers, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Inc., participated in a job fair to try to woo more workers to its assembly plant in Vance.

But the outreach was not for workers in Alabama — Mercedes went recruiting in the Detroit area, hoping to hire Michigan auto workers to relocate to Alabama.

"Just because you have a population of 'X' people living in an area doesn't mean you have 'X' as a potential work force," he said. "I've seen Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers announce that they were bringing a plant into a given area, and signs went up in an industrial park and site preparation began, but those plants never materialized — because the work force didn't pan out.

"It's possible to over-employ an area."