Toyota Spurs Revival in Miss. Town with Jobs, Spinoff Effects

2011-11-10

Blue Springs, Miss.— Before Toyota came, Cassius Perry was struggling like many in this hilly, sparsely populated region of north Mississippi that's shed thousands of furniture manufacturing jobs since the 1990s. The young father of three went to school to be a barber, but ended up working for a salvage company while he held out hope for something better.
This year Perry landed good pay and health insurance when he went to work for a supplier to the sprawling new Toyota plant on the outskirts of the tiny town of Blue Springs. Hundreds have been hired, giving local leaders hope that their area will become another Southern automotive boomtown. The plant is finally set to begin production on Nov. 17, following more than a year's worth of agonizing delays.
"It changed my whole life around. I was struggling before I got this job. It made a difference for me, my family, my kids and even my church. I can pay tithing now," said Perry, 22. "The benefits make the difference. I don't want to be 30 and stacked up in medical debt."
About 1,250 Toyota employees are already building test cars at the plant, and the company expects to hire another 280 this year. More will come aboard in the future, and dozens of others are employed by suppliers.
Production comes at a time when the future is uncertain for many in the state where unemployment has hovered above 10 percent. Excitement over the plant is palpable from the folding tables at the single store in Blue Springs to the halls of the governor's mansion in Jackson.
"It's a godsend to us," said Mayor Jack Reed Jr. of Tupelo, the biggest city near the facility with 34,500 residents. "People around here certainly have a little more bounce in our steps now."
Officials from three counties spent years working to lure a car manufacturer, watching as other southern communities have reaped the economic spoils of new plant openings. In the past decade, foreign carmakers that opened plants elsewhere have included Nissan in central Mississippi, Toyota in Texas, Kia in Georgia and Volkswagen in Tennessee.
Gov. Haley Barbour went to Japan to court Toyota before the Blue Springs plant was announced in 2007, and state officials were glad to sign off on a $324-million incentive package.
To illustrate what a car manufacturer can do for an area, Barbour cites a Toyota plant that opened in Georgetown, Ky., in the 1980s.
"It literally changed that entire region of the state. It started with only a couple of thousand jobs and now has well over 5,000 jobs," Barbour said in a telephone interview.
Analysts say the South is attractive to foreign automakers partly because in right-to-work states that are common in the region workers can't be forced to join unions if their co-workers unionize. Nice weather and proximity to customers in growing states are other factors.
"They pay pretty good wages, so there's not much incentive to unionize. This is why the Southeast is just harvesting new jobs," said Larry Rinek, a California-based consultant with Frost and Sullivan who works with major auto manufacturers and suppliers.
Toyota has been working with the state Department of Employment Security to take job applications; more than 41,000 have been collected.

HOLBROOK MOHR
/ Associated Press