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LM Glasfiber jobs to pay less than average initially Saturday, Oct 20, 2007 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Employees of a Denmark-based windmill blade manufacturing company, which broke ground here Friday, will earn less than the average manufacturing wage in Arkansas. A spokesman for LM Glasfiber said in July the company would pay the more than 1,000 people it expects to eventually employ "competitive wages," but wages will actually range from $11 to $15 an hour, the company's CEO said Friday in an interview with the Arkansas News Bureau. "We're talking about somewhere between 11 and 15 dollars an hour," LM Glasfiber CEO Roland M. Sunden said. "Depending on performance and seniority, that will grow over the years. You'll have a progression in the salary scales." The weekly average wage for jobs associated with manufacturing in Arkansas last year was $674.19, according to the state Department of Workforce Services. The figure includes both full-time and part-time positions, as well as laborers and supervisors. The weekly wage of a 40-hour per week job that pays $15 an hour, the top end of LM Glasfiber's beginning pay scale, is $600, more than $70 below the state average in 2006. Sunden said the wage range did not include wages at the company's North American headquarters, which it also will locate in Little Rock, along with a training academy. But there will only be 10 to 20 people working in the corporate headquarters, Sunden said. "We're trying to have it very lean," he said. Economic development and raising the state's per-capita income, which is one of the lowest in the nation, is state government's top priority, Gov. Mike Beebe and economic development officials have said since Beebe took office in January. The state lured LM Glasfiber with an income tax exemption until 2033, $8 million in economic infrastructure funds, $8.9 million from the governor's quick-action closing fund, and up to $3,500 in training per employee Although the jobs pay less than average, Beebe said the company will still make a positive economic impact on the state. "Would we like (the wages) to be even higher? Absolutely," Beebe said. "Do we want folks to make $15 an hour if we don't have any other alternative for them? Absolutely, so it's a good day." More than 78,000 Arkansans are unemployed, according to labor statistics released Friday by the Department of Workforce Services. "We're looking to expand our job base overall," Matt DeCample, Beebe's spokesman, said later Friday as the governor attended a separate economic development announcement. "Higher paying jobs that boost our overall average is something that we're always going to target, but we're going to look at all opportunities as well." Sunden said the demand for the company's windmill blades is so strong that it has begun working out of a temporary facility in Little Rock. The first blades from the temporary facility are expected to be shipped out in the first quarter of 2008. Training will also be conducted in the temporary facility. The company's permanent facility at the Little Rock Port Authority is expected to be completed sometime in the first half of 2008, the company said. |
