I think it will be a great sign when the Greensboro Hub finally opens.
http://www.myfox8.com/wghp-fedex-pti-jobs-090527,0,7594933.story
FedEx Could Hire More Employees This Fall
By Chad Tucker FOX8 News
May 27,2009
GREENSBORO, N.C. - Between 160 and 170 FedEx employees will move into the company's new sorting facility at Piedmont Triad International Airport next week, and company officials say they hope to add another 170 positions as early as this fall.
The new $600 million hub utilizes the most modern sorting equipment in the world, and the company expects that as the economy rights itself, more packages will be sent and additional help will be needed to handle the increased load.
For now, FedEx will use the existing runways at the airport, but the shipping company's own runway and taxiway are under construction. Depending on the weather, officials believe they will open as early as this fall or as late as next spring.
The road to the hub has been a long one.
The executive director of PTIA said Wednesday he remembers the day, in 1998, when FedEx called saying they wanted to call Greensboro home for its mid-Atlantic hub.
"FedEx started sorting under a funeral tent down in the old terminal site many years ago," recalled Ted Johnson.
Along the way, nearby neighborhoods afraid of the noise and environmental impact of hundreds of flights sued FedEx, but eventually lost in state and federal courts.
"We've had lots of meetings with the community," said Johnson. "I think the citizens are much more aware of what this means today than they were 11 years ago."
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FedEx Delays Opening of Greensboro Hub
December 26, 2008
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The FedEx sorting hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport will not open as scheduled in June 2009 and, when it does open, will have at least 50 percent fewer employees than the company pledged to employ.
FedEx said it could be fall 2009 or later before the cargo-sorting hub opens because of lower demand for shipping services and a cost-cutting effort by the company.
FedEx spokesman Jim McCluskey said the company's current airport operations, which employs 160 full- and part-time workers, will move into the newly built hub in June. FedEx then plans to hire up to 200 additional employees for the first phase of the hub, for a total workforce of about 360.
That figure is well short of the 700 to 800 employees FedEx has been saying for years it would employ when the hub opened.
FedEx is eligible for $115 million in incentives based on the number of employees at the hub and other factors. FedEx and the state agreed to those incentives in 1998, but McCluskey said a lot has changed in the last decade.
"I think you need to look at the economy more than 10 years ago and the projections based on that snapshot in time," he said.
FedEx said the delay of the airport sorting facility has not affected its ground distribution hub being built in nearby Kernersville. The company broke ground on that facility last month, and it remains on schedule to open in 2011 with at least 700 people working there at the outset.