Steve Brenneman said he was “shocked” and “disappointed” to recently learn that the average Elkhart County manufacturing worker made less in 2013 than in 2009.
The statistic was detailed in an Elkhart Truth report, looking at the local economy five years after the recession, in which some area employers decried their inability to find people willing to work for $10 hourly wages in entry-level production jobs.
Brenneman, founder and president of Nappanee-based ATC Trailers, wants the community to know there’s another way of doing business, and he wishes more Elkhart area employers would embrace it.
It’s called “lean.” It’s most often referred to as “lean manufacturing,” but the concept, a philosophy of constantly seeking improvement and greater efficiency in order to add value for the customer, is spilling over to the service sector as well. Health care providers have become of some its most enthusiastic adopters in recent years.
ATC Trailers, which makes a wide range of aluminum- and steel-frame open-air and enclosed trailers, starts workers at $12 to $13 an hour, but pays $23 an hour full base-pay, Brenneman said. It typically takes about six months to reach full base-pay, but those who come in with more experience can hit that mark in two to three months, he said.
He doesn’t pay anyone $10 an hour, ever.
“For the work they’re doing, it’s not a fair wage at all,” Brenneman said. “If our employees’ kids have to be on subsidized lunches and things like that, it’s not successful, not to me.”
Brenneman realizes that most area manufacturers think in the traditional sense: they have to pay production workers as little as possible in order to be profitable. But he called that a “misconception.”