Kickstart: Hiring during a pandemic

We've all heard about — or personally experienced — the difficulties of finding good, qualified workers in manufacturing. Now add the coronavirus to the mix.

You may be able to access a larger pool of applicants because of layoffs at other companies. But how do you do an interview? Do you want to overlook someone just because they don't have access to Zoom for a virtual interview?

Auto supplier TG Missouri, a supplier of injection molded parts such as instrument cluster bezels, glove boxes, exterior trim and safety systems, needs workers for the third shift at its New Albany, Ind., plant. The company is using management consulting group Staff Management SMX, based in Illinois, to conduct the hiring process.

After applying, potential employees are directed to a parking lot where an interview is conducted either with the person in their car — at reserved spaces to keep the cars apart — or outside the car, with both the applicant and the hiring agent maintaining social distance.

"It's different because you're not in the office ... but that recruiter actually comes up to you and is totally dedicated to you," Staff Management Director of Operations Erin DeWeese told Inside Indiana Business.
 

Last month, a judge ruled that after 10 years of legal wrangling over the potential fallout from PVC pipes made by JM Eagle and installed by communities and utility companies that the utilities were owed exactly $0.

Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge George Wu concluded that a reasonable jury couldn't make a finding of actual damages under the Federal Claims Act "that would not be erroneous as a matter of law, be totally unfounded and/or be purely speculative."

That meant that rather than owing possibly billions of dollars in damages, JM Eagle owed none.

We've been covering this long and complicated story involving a whistleblower alleging that pipes weren't made according to standards, JM Eagle has been fighting that case in court and now the judge has decided effectively in the company's favor.

As Catherine Kavanaugh writes: "In his 68-page ruling, the judge said 'there is no real-world evidence of defects as to the pipe' in the form of faulty pipe removed from any of the 26 projects installed."

This case has been in process for 14 years. Plastics News' first story on it was in February 2010, so forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of the idea that this story will be gone forever.

This week's print issue includes an overview of what the initial numbers told us about federal Paycheck Protection Program loans to the plastics industry. (You can also read it online here.)

The lead on this story? At least 6,000 plastics companies received emergency loans totaling more than $1.6 billion through the program. And we know those numbers don't include every company that participated, just due to the logistics of the program and how the government reported the results.

We already know that PPP allowed companies to rehire or retain people. In one example, materials supplier Americhem Inc. had a loan of between $5 million and $10 million approved on April 8, the SBA data showed. That money allowed the Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, firm to bring 73 furloughed employees back to work.

We're still going through some of the data, and we'll continue to keep you updated.