Twenty-three Butler County residents are among those hired so far, Plant Manager Dovie Majors told the SunCoke Energy Middletown Community Advisory Panel this week.
“With this economy being what is, jobs are in high demand. People are coming from further distances than they used to, to seek employment,” said John Sawyer, a Middletown real estate agent for 40 years and a member of the advisory panel.
SunCoke Energy Inc., an Illinois company that operates coke plants, has been building a $370 million coke plant for more than a year off Yankee Road. Expected to be built by the fall, it will supply AK Steel Holding Corp. with a raw material for making steel.
Hiring was supposed to be finished by the end of this month, but SunCoke is still looking for product technicians with a 3rd Class Ohio Stationary Engineer’s License, Polyak said. The hiring process included a $47 fee and two rounds of testing, followed by an interview if the applicant made it that far. Majors said 268 people passed testing.
Majors, Polyak and other members of the leadership team are part of the 85 who will be working at the Middletown coke plant. Others hired so far include residents from Montgomery, Hamilton and Warren counties, Indiana, Kentucky and as far as Connecticut, according to Majors.
“Our responsibility and our obligation is to get the best qualified employees for these positions,” Polyak said.
Workforce One of Butler County helped with recruitment. The jobs are important to Butler County, but if to date 23 employees are county residents, it’s not going to have a significant impact on income tax revenue for the county, said Don Kell, manager of Workforce One.
“I think everybody had the idea the competition was going to be tough,” Kell said.
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