SAN ANTONIO — In a hot job market, where the local unemployment rate is running below the historically low national average, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas is about to hang a sign to hire 400 new employees for the $541 million axle plant being built on what had been its front yard.
There’s a little time — the 500,000-square-foot axle plant is not expected to start production until the end of 2026 — but Susann Kazunas, the truck plant’s new president, is already working on a strategy that focuses on two things: job security and veterans.
“These are high-quality, stable jobs, and we are committed to that long-term employment stability for our team members,” said Kazunas, noting that the plant didn’t lay off workers or cut pay during the Great Recession, after the tsunami in Japan in 2011 or during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We really believe that we’ve shown over and over and over again that commitment to long-term job stability, and we’re excited that we’re going to be able to add 400 team members into our family with what is ahead of us.”
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Metro San Antonio bills itself as “Military City USA,” in no small part because Joint Base San Antonio is the home of two U.S. Army and two U.S. Air Force bases. An estimated 11 percent of the region’s population of about 2.6 million are either active-duty or retired military, according to U.S. Census data. Kazunas said Toyota intends to do aggressive outreach within that community to fill its open positions.
“We’ve got so much potential with our veteran population — there are 160,000 veterans who live here in San Antonio, some of those might be ready for a second career, and they have many of the skills that we’re looking for,” she said.
“Historically, we’ve not really advertised. Word of mouth and the number of positions that we can fill just from our current team members’ friends and family is how we’ve filled our positions for a very, very long time,” Kazunas said.
“Just based on the number of applicants that we’ve had this year to date, I don’t imagine that there is going to be any concern with filling those positions. But where we need to do some special work is maintenance, and that’s industrywide. I mean, the entire industry is working on how we fill this [skilled] labor pipeline as it relates to maintenance and also tool-and-die and stamping.”
About 3,700 people work directly for Toyota at the plant, while more than 5,500 work for suppliers on the 2,000-acre campus. Kazunas said attrition rates have run about 5 percent annually since the pandemic, meaning hiring has been ongoing, albeit smaller in scale than hiring to fill an axle plant.
Kazunas said the added assembly jobs in the new axle plant can be life-altering and open up new opportunities for residents. She pointed to her own history with Toyota.
A native of Kentucky, she joined Toyota in 1998 at its Georgetown Assembly complex and went to night school, with help from the automaker, to earn a degree in mechanical engineering.
“I mean, we have people who work here, who maybe came from poverty or multigeneration families living in the same house that never imagined that they would be able to not just have a job with a company where they knew they were going to have work, but a career,” she said.
Source: autonews.com
