Volkswagen our best chance at jobs

By James Clark

Workers assemble vehicles at a VW plant in Zwickau, Germany. The company is headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany and is expected to announce next month the location of a new plant in the United States.

Folks are always wanting me to write about the prospect for local jobs and boy would I like to oblige. Trouble is, as most of us know, there just aren’t many jobs being created right now, in Warren County and around the state.
Undoubtedly, the best chance this area has at new manufacturing jobs in the near future is the $1 billion Volkswagen plant state officials are frantically trying to land in Chattanooga. The new plant is expected to create up to 4,000 manufacturing jobs.
The good news is Tennessee is doing everything it can to land this plant. And it should. On Wednesday, the state Department of Economic Development requested $1.25 million from the state comptroller for ‘site improvement and preparation work’ to the 1,600-acre site. The nine-member Hamilton County Commission has already approved some $320,000 for the same purpose.
The bad news is that the site is located in the corner of Hamilton County that’s farthest from Warren County. And while it might take 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to downtown Chattanooga from McMinnville, you can probably tack on another 15 to 20 minutes to get to the proposed Volkswagen site.
In other words, local residents would be really stretched to make a daily commute of that magnitude. But I’m sure many people would do it simply because good-paying manufacturing jobs are so scarce.
There is one sticking point, however. Chattanooga has not been awarded the coveted Volkswagen plant yet. A site in Athens, Ala., that’s 2,010 acres is said to also be a strong contender. And Tennessee sure knows how it feels to finish second when it comes to landing an automobile manufacturing plant (see Toyota in 2007, which picked Tupelo, Miss.).
So for all the folks who want to know about jobs, there are 4,000 of them up for grabs outside Chattanooga. Volkswagen officials are expected to make their decision about where to locate the plant next month. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.