The carmaker has about 1,350 hourly jobs and 150 salaried jobs available for the plant, but already the number of applicants has exceeded, several times, the employment scheme. According to Auto Observer, by the end of last month, the carmaker has received 9,500 applications.
All these men and women are fighting for a job which will pay in the $15- to $20-per-hour range. People from 33 states applied, with the bulk of those looking for a job (8,000) come from the state where the facility is being built. According to Toyota, most of those selected will have to reside within an hour's drive of the location.
Toyota's plant in Mississippi broke ground in 2007, but construction at the facility was sidetracked because of the poor sales and the economic recession which hit the industry one year later. When the build stopped in late 2008, the work on the facility was nearly finalized.
The Blue Springs plant, dubbed Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi (TMMMS) will be the tenth facility operated by the Japanese manufacturer on US soil. The plant will be in charge with producing most of the Corolla models sold in the States starting fall 2011.
The plant has become a few months back the focus of UAW's new president, Bob King, who argued that Toyota abandoned an unionized plant, NUMMI, and chose to open a non-unionized one, in Mississippi.
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