According to Greg Gardner of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, the Big Three automakers are facing an incredible turnover rate within the next decade. One estimate says that 260,000 of the 400,000 hourly employees working at Chrysler, GM and Ford will either retire or be eligible to retire by 2003. With the automakers gearing up to hire new employees at a rate unheard of since the early 1960s, they plan to take advantage of this opportunity to redefine their workforce.
"There was a time when a plant manager who needed help just called the nearest employment office, asked for 100 workers and hoped for the best," Gardner observed. "Little testing was done. If a person was not cut out for life on the factory floor, everyone found out the hard way." However, he continued, those days are gone now.
The Big Three automakers, as well as other Detroit-area manufacturers, have begun relying on the services of employee testing companies. One such company, HRStrategies, subjects job interviewees to a rigorous two-day session of tests. Each applicant must demonstrate basic reading and math skills for starters. More importantly, however, they must exhibit "an ability and willingness to work in a team," according to Gardner.
"As manufacturing technology grows more sophisticated, workers who use it will need a broader range of skills and must be constantly ready to learn new ones," he pointed out. "They'll also need to work with less supervision and more awareness of what's going on around them to assure the quality consumers demand."
(Akron Beacon Journal, May 7, 1995) IM