Workers Speak more than 40 Languages at Louisville GE Factories

There is a severe US labor shortage just about everywhere, but especially in manufacturing and distribution.

Supply Chain Digest Says... It “has helped us to tap into populations we might not have known how to tap into before,” a GE Appliances manager says. What do you say? Click here to send us your comments Click here to see reader feedback

But there is a labor pool few companies seek to leverage: immigrants coming to the US as refugees.

As recently described on the web site of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), one company that sees things differently is GE Appliances, headquartered in Louisville, KY, with a major manufacturing presence there – the famous “Appliance Park.

According to NAM, GE (now actually owned by Chinese company Haier) has hired than 100 non-U.S.-born employees in recent months for factory jobs.

About 50 of those worker are refugees from Afghanistan who came here last fall when the US military exited the country. The other half are mostly Spanish-speaking and hail from multiple nations.

It’s ironic in a sense that GE would be a leader in hiring refugees, as the company even under its new ownership has been a leader also in the “made in USA” charge.

Earlier this year, GE opened a new production line – and needed to hire over 1,200 people to run it.

Learning of the news, local Catholic Charities and Kentucky Refugee Ministries informed GE they were helping a group of people from Afghanistan and ask if the company would consider hiring them.

GEA was indeed interested, and opened the hiring process to refugees and other immigrants. It has been one of the best workforce decisions the company has made in recent memory, a GE recruiter told NAM.

GE has workers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Peru, Honduras, Venezuela and Mexico. A recent analysis found production staff at three factories communicate in a total of more than 40 languages.

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GE Appliances now offers new-hire orientations in many languages, including Afghanistan’s official languages of Pashto and Dari, as well as Spanish and Swahili. It also designates some in-plant translators, picking those good at English as well as their native language.

The company also launched a buddy system which pairs new employees with workers who have been at the facility for a while.

Working with charities to hire refugees can be seen as the next step in the company’s hiring practices. It “has helped us to tap into populations we might not have known how to tap into before,” a GE Appliances manager says.

Hiring refugees and other immigrant workers has been a boon for GE Appliances, the company says.

“They are the first to raise their hands for overtime,” the same GE manager said. “They work very, very hard. In [manufacturing], our jobs are not always the easiest. But they do it and they love it.”

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