Toyota’s Kentucky Plant Hiring 400 to Build RAV4 Hybrid
Hirees who stay on with Toyota for six months in Georgetown will receive $500 signing bonus, eventually make $29 an hour.
Tucked away in northern Kentucky is the city of Georgetown. Originally named Lebanon prior to 1790 — when it was then renamed for the first President of the United States, George Washington — Georgetown is the seventh-largest city by population in Kentucky, with nearly 35,000 residents.
Georgetown is also home to Toyota’s largest manufacturing plant in the world, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky. Just over 10,000 work around the clock to build the Camry, Avalon, and Lexus ES 350. Now, according to Louisville CBS affiliate WLKY-TV, TMMK is hiring 400 more to help build its newest product, the RAV4 Hybrid.
As “an incentive to attract people to our company and to a career in manufacturing,” according to Toyota representative Rick Hesterberg via Louisville newspaper The Courier-Journal, those who stay on with TMMK for six months will earn a $500 signing bonus.
The 400 will also start at $18.07 per hour for working the day shift, $18.98 per hour during the night, with employees who stick with the company eventually earning $29 an hour for helping in the run-up to the production of the plant’s first RAV4 Hybrids, set to begin January 2020.
Hesterberg told Louisville FOX affiliate WDRB-TV the signing bonus is an unprecedented move for Toyota, citing Kentucky’s tight, highly competitive job market; the state’s unemployment rate was 4.4% this August, the same rate it was at that time a year before. Yet, the move was made not only because of the upcoming RAV4 Hybrid production, but to fill in the gaps left behind by retiring employees in order “to maintain our business and continue our success,” per The Courier-Journal.
The TMMK hiring is just part of a major investment Toyota is making into its plants. According to The Detroit Bureau, the company dropped $238 million into Georgetown earlier this year to help prepare the plant for not only the RAV4 Hybrid, but also the Lexus ES 300 Hybrid, the latter already leaving the plant.
That investment, in turn, is part of a $749-million plan for five of Toyota’s U.S. plants, including $391 million going into its San Antonio, Texas facility, where the Tacoma and Tundra are assembled. The $749-million investment is part of an overall $13-billion spending plan for the U.S., running from 2017 through 2022.
Photos: WLKY-TV; Toyota
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