Jamyla Goodwin has been searching for a job for three months.
On Tuesday afternoon, she made her way to booths at Aiken Technical College during a job fair for Savannah River Site, which is halfway to filling 3,000 openings.
There were 1,500 people in line before the job fair started.
Aiken was host to the fourth in a series of meetings that explain the $1.6 billion federal stimulus cleanup work at SRS. The fifth will be held at Paine College on July 20.
Ms. Goodwin was seeking clerical work or perhaps something in a lab.
"I'm just taking off a semester to work and save a little bit more," said the Aiken college student.
Tony Suber, 22, has been looking for a job for four months. The Aiken resident was laid off in February. For five years, he worked for a contractor that supplied floor production labor to Bridgestone in Aiken.
The job search hasn't gone well.
"I have to keep getting out there and looking. I don't like sitting around," Mr. Suber said. "Anything they can give me, I can take it."
Roger Eshelman, executive vice president at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, said about half of the 3,000 stimulus positions have been filled.
"We're running resumes through 13 placement agencies. Not to discourage anybody, we currently have over 5,000 resumes for consideration. We're trying to place 100 people a week," Mr. Eshelman said.
The "shovel ready" projects retained 798 SRS workers who were going to lose their jobs because of a lack of funding, Mr. Eshelman said.
More than 600 new people have been hired so far for the additional temporary work.
Mr. Eshelman said the number of people working at SRS should be above 2,000 by the end of the year and reach 3,000 by the spring.
The jobs are temporary, however, disappearing after September 2011.
The economic stimulus package provided SRS with $1.6 billion to accelerate environmental cleanup projects.
"Work we planned to do, but just didn't have the resources to do it. Now we do," said Jeff Allison, the manager of the U.S. Energy Department's Savannah River Operations office.
Jobs are open for nuclear engineers and physicists, construction and general employment.
Workers will decommission two nuclear material production reactors, prepare waste for shipment to Nevada and perform environmental cleanup.
Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.
NEXT JOB FAIR
WHEN: July 20
WHERE: Paine College, 1235 15th St., Augusta
Town hall meeting 11 a.m., Gilbert-Lambuth Chapel
Job fair, noon to 3 p.m., Carter Gymnasium
HOW TO APPLY
To apply for a stimulus job at SRS without going to one of the jobs fairs go to srs.gov/recovery and click "employment," which will take you to a list of employment agencies that are accepting resumes.
Comments
So, almost 1000 of the 3000 jobs include those retained at positions they already have. So, not as many new hires as it looks like they were advertising. And, as the article says, unless the law is changed, they will all vanish on September 30, 2011. Meanwhile, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is getting something like 20% of the $1.6 billion, so they are the main beneficiary of all this.
I just read an article that the money from this stimulus went nowhere. It seems like it's providing some jobs to me.
It's providing temporary work that will last two years at most, and most of those positions are only staving off inevitable unemployment for many who are already working at the site. What are all these people going to do when the funds for these stimulus "jobs" are exhausted?
One of the people from SRS said with the new power plants/expanding power plants coming along the training people get while at SRS could lead them to full time work at those plants. Regardless, something temporary is better than nothing at all, until something permanent comes along (though no job is truly permanent these days).
Well said, imdstuf.
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