http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110708/BUSINESS/307080057/Thousands-line-up-Ford-jobs-national-hiring-stalls?odyssey=obinsiteThousands line up for Ford jobs as national hiring stalls
5:15 PM, Jul. 8, 2011
Thousands lined up Friday morning for a chance to work at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant, just as the federal government announced the national unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent last month.
About 2,500 showed up at the state Office of Employment & Training at 6th and Cedar streets downtown to put in applications for $15.51-an-hour jobs at the Ford plant on Fern Valley Road, which will reopen November after a major renovation. snip
Men and women— many with their adult children or parents — said they were hoping for work beyond hardscrabble minimum wages available from warehouse, restaurant and other low-skill jobs. “I want a job where I can survive,” said movie ticket clerk Devin Schneider, with his 3-year-old son Aiden in one arm and an umbrella in the other.
A Ford job would about double his earnings, he said. “I could get me a car, and a house, and move out of my parents’ house.”
Schneider’s 54-year-old father, an unemployed trucker, also made the 40-minute drive from rural Charlestown, Ind., to apply.