Last-mile bus brings workers to warehouse jobs
The first workers arrive before dawn, ready to swap buses for the last-mile service that will deliver them to the warehouses.
COTA’s Line 81 stops where the shuttle picks up — at a Marathon gas station on the corner of Alum Creek Drive and LondonGroveport Road. By 6 a.m., the station’s parking lot and store are a hive of activity, with people moving from the city bus to a smaller one operated by the workforce transportation program known as GREAT, for Groveport Rickenbacker Employee Access Transit.
Sanford Charity is on the scene even earlier. “I want the bus to be warm when people get on,” said Charity, a driver for the Rickenbacker green line. He’s helpful, courteous and mindful of the struggles.
“Two hours,” a young man says as he drops into his seat. “That’s how long it takes me to get here.”
The warehouse and logistics industry around Rickenbacker Airport, in southeastern Franklin County, has spawned thousands of new jobs in recent years as the Columbus metro area continues to develop as a hub for the fast-growing sector. The boom helps boost county employment rates and fills municipal coffers in surrounding communities such as Groveport and Obetz, and in wealthy New Albany, a suburb to the northeast that also hosts many warehouse jobs.
Groveport has just 5,500 residents but gains so much revenue from the Rickenbacker workday surge — officials say it makes the largest daytime population leap in central Ohio — that the small city boasts a municipal golf course, aquatic park, community and cultural-arts centers.
Most of the warehouse workers live elsewhere. Many come from poor inner-city neighborhoods and face long commutes for modest pay and uncertain hours.
“The main problem is getting from the inner city out to these jobs,” said Ishay Ferguson, 28, who has worked at a few warehouses in the Rickenbacker area.
The East Side resident quit one warehouse job after tiring of the gap between the closest Central Ohio Transit Authority bus stop and the company door. “I couldn’t get this shuttle there,” Ferguson said. “I had to walk a mile and a half.”
Workers often feel expendable, she said, even as they try to balance transportation challenges, low wages and changing schedules that can stretch a day, or cut it short, with little or no notice.
“They’ll ask you to come in for mandatory Saturdays, or overtime,” Ferguson said one February morning after boarding the shuttle. “I have a text on my phone right now asking me to come in at 5 a.m. How?”
Michael Blake, a warehouse worker who rode the same shuttle as Ferguson, said he arrived for his earlymorning shift on a recent Monday only to be told his job had ended on Friday.
He had another by Tuesday. “It’s rinse and repeat,” Ferguson said.
The last-mile service that workers use to get inside far-flung parts of the industrial parks kicked off during the fall of 2015 in response to concerns by companies, most of which enjoy some type of tax abatement, that they needed workers with reliable transportation. New Albany also operates a shuttle to warehouses there.
“City administration was approached by a major employer, and they had had to do some private shuttling,” said Bob Dowler, Groveport transportation director. “They made it clear: ‘We don’t know what our future here is if we don’t properly staff.’”
The city had hoped that employers would help pick up the tab for the shuttle, which this year is estimated at about $531,000 for Groveport and $161,000 for Obetz, he said. A few companies each kicked in $5,000 initially but weren’t interested in providing long-term support.
“We didn’t want to ask the employees,” Dowler said.
According to a recent survey of companies by the Rickenbacker Employer Assistance Network, the average pay rate in 2016 for a pick/pack material handler — the most common job — was $12.82 an hour, with an annual turnover rate of 31 percent.
“There’s been a cry for child-care services, too,” said Groveport Assistant City Administrator Jeff Green. “There’s only so much the city can do.”
As she rides the shuttle to her Rickenbacker job, 23-year-old Ashley Longino daydreams about someday having a car, being able to stop for coffee, working in an office. She said she is starting out at $9.50 an hour through a temporary staffing agency, a common route for the workers needed to fill orders for companies that have established logistics centers in central Ohio. Most do not hire employees directly, at least not at first, relying on staffing agencies and third-party logistics companies to recruit a workforce and manage operations.
“I needed the money, so I took the job,” said Longino, who lives on the South Side. “I did expect it to pay a little more.”
Some human-resources managers, meanwhile, say they might have to interview 10 people to get one person who stays with the job, said Angela Atwood, foreign trade zone administrator for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority. She leads the Rickenbacker Employer Assistance Network, a group of human-resources officials and business owners.
“Half can’t pass the drug test,” Atwood said. “After a week, only two or three of them are left. Turnover costs a lot of money.”
On one of his return routes, Charity picked up a young man whose shift normally didn’t end until later in the afternoon. “I have no job now,” Jeremiah Adams told the driver. He said he was let go after a disagreement about a pay increase he thought he was due.
Adams, 27, said he moved to Columbus from Mississippi because he thought it would offer more opportunity. Charity encouraged him to keep trying, to find another job and stick with it.
Adams smiled. “The buses ain’t failed me yet,” he said. But the ease of earning a good living in Columbus? “That was a false dream.”