Experts predict tough future for automotive jobs

COLUMBIA - South Carolina is chasing automotive manufacturing jobs even as the industry's work force is slipping away from the United States.

Some experts warn South Carolina will lose its auto jobs, too, as automakers and parts companies move jobs abroad or squeeze out jobs at home through efficiency gains.

Such predictions call into question whether the state can continue to bet on adding manufacturing jobs and raising income through the automotive industry.

For years, S.C. officials have pursued vehicle assembly factories, with the expectation that parts plants will follow. But the state lost out in recent rounds of new vehicle production plants, BMW expansion plans are on hold, and the state has no new announced prospects on the horizon.

If the recent past is a guide, the future seems bright for S.C. automotive employment: rapid growth through 2001, followed by a two-year lull, that left the state with 32,400 auto jobs at the end of last year.

But experts say the future might not be so shiny. The transportation industry has cut 15 percent of its work force nationwide since 1999, and a consulting firm predicts that by the end of the decade, up to a fifth of U.S. auto parts production could shift to countries that pay less to their workers.

"Job increases in the industry are going to be tough," said Antonio Benecchi, a partner in the Detroit office of Roland Berger, a German industry consulting firm. "At best, it's more likely to be a stable employment base."

South Carolina's auto employment held steady during 2003, and in some cases, it made gains:

Parts makers in the state employed 19,800 workers in late 2003, an all-time peak, according to government statistics. Factories added 1,400 jobs in 2003 after cutting 600 jobs in the previous 18 months.

Expansions by BMW and Freightliner in the past three years have been offset by job losses due to the closing of the Mack Trucks plant in Winnsboro.

Among the state's tire plants, Bridgestone/Firestone has created 950 jobs since opening its Aiken County plant in 1997. But French tire maker Michelin trimmed 1,200 jobs in the past three years.

The BMW plant in Greer will hold steady at 2002 job levels for at least the next two or three years, said plant spokesman Robert Hitt.

The automotive research park being developed by Clemson University in Greenville will create some high-paying jobs, supporters say.

Gov. Mark Sanford helped seal the deal for the International Center for Automotive Research last fall. The state is contributing $72 million of the start-up cost. The rest is coming from BMW and other private supporters.

High stakes

Since Gov. Carroll Campbell wooed BMW to South Carolina in 1992, state leaders have targeted the automotive industry as a prime source of new, higher-paying jobs to replace job losses in the textile industry.

That effort grew in the past two years with a study by Harvard economist Michael Porter and the Monitor Group consulting firm in Boston. It identified the automotive sector as a growing industry "cluster" the state should foster.

"You have to look at areas where you can do something better than the rest of the world and do those things well," Sanford said. "I believe there is indeed a growing automotive cluster that is going to serve this state very well."

Steve Taylor, 48 and a tool-and-die maker at Bosch's drum brake operation in Sumter, disagrees with the governor's outlook.

"As far as I see in the Sumter area, I think more jobs are going to go overseas."

Nearly 400 of his plant's 820 workers will lose their jobs when Bosch moves drum brake production from Sumter to Mexico. Layoffs begin in April.