Chattanooga Workforce Ready For Volkswagen Plant

Volkswagen

This time tomorrow, we may be reporting Volkswagen's decision on where it plans to locate a new assembly plant. German automotive magazines continue to claim it's Alabama's to lose, citing workforce and auto-parts suppliers.

Still, the list of reasons why Volkswagen should choose Chattanooga appears longer than Alabama's. Enterprise South sits near three Interstates, features two-rail lines, the possibility of free land and Chattanooga touts a revitalized downtown and a budding green community.

Click here for an update on Mississippi's Toyota plantState Representative Gerald McCormick says "I believe the state has the ability and has the desire to do what's necessary to compete with other states." Incentives aside, when Toyota picked Mississippi over Chattanooga, company officials listed an educated, ethical workforce as a deciding factor.

Now, the workforce question returns as Huntsville's connection to NASA could prove enticing to Volkswagen.

Ron Bailey, UTC Engineering Professor, says "the kind of people necessary to assembly automobiles are available in and around Chattanooga." In fact, the Enterprise South site brochure lists a pool of more than 460,000 workers within 50-miles and more than 90,000 currently feature manufacturing skills. VW plans 2,000 positions.

Chattanooga State provides customized training programs. The school's president, Jim Catanzaro, says they only need the specs from a perspective employer to help workers develop a specific skill. "What do those assembly workers do, are they working in a line or working in teams. If teams they have to learn more than the function of one job," says Catanzaro.

Training could be fast tracked with programs running on campus -- and at a new corporate training center planned at Enterprise South. Catanzaro says "the day you open your company, we say to prospects coming to our community, we will have a fully prepared workforce for you. We promise it."