As I say in many speeches, Virginia coal helps create good paying jobs from Southwest Virginia to Roanoke to our Virginia Ports. This increase in manufacturing jobs in Roanoke is a big plus. These jobs would not be available if the federal government imposed energy tax schemes, which attack America’s energy resources.
Manufacturing in the valleys: Getting back on track
The Roanoke Times
By Jeff Sturgeon
August 28, 2011
Finally, after staggering losses in the manufacturing trades, a company that builds things is hiring. FreightCar America, at its Roanoke factory, this past week announced a big order and plans to hire about 200 people. Officials want to nearly double the work force by late this year.
At a trackside news conference, the head of Norfolk Southern Corp. smacked a new rail car with a bottle of champagne, cracking it open.
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers heralded the pending arrival of “good-paying jobs.”
However, the good economic news could be tempered by a number of variables. Pay levels at the plant fall below area norms for manufacturing. And the lingering possibility of another recession could put the brakes on plans, one analyst said.
To be sure, though, there is cause for celebration.
One in three manufacturing jobs in the Roanoke metro area in 1990 has since disappeared, according to federal labor data. Experts say two factors drove most of the domestic manufacturing job losses: higher productivity, resulting in a lower need for workers, and foreign competition, which took jobs away.
But things are turning around. Manufacturing employment is growing modestly again and one expanding sector is rail cars, the multi-ton vehicles that ferry everything from coal and automobiles to grain and chemicals. Rail car makers delivered more than three times as many units during the second quarter of 2011 as they did in the second quarter of 2010, according to the Railway Supply Institute.
In Roanoke, for the second time this year, NS ordered 1,500 rail cars to replace older units in its fleet. For each 1,500 cars, it will pay FreightCar about $100 million. Employment at the FreightCar shops on Campbell Avenue Southeast could rise close to the factory’s pre-recession peak of 430 employees.
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