A crowd of several hundred people stretched from the front door of the Dorolyn Academy of Music to halfway around the block Monday, all waiting in line to fill out applications for jobs with the Ford Motor Company.
The application intake fair, which was held at five locations throughout the city and suburbs, was backed by State Rep. La Shawn Ford and the Illinois Department of Employment Security as part of an effort to drive down the state unemployment rate.
An email distributed by Ford the day before the event encouraged potential applicants to arrive early, but by shortly after the start time of 9 a.m., the sidewalks were already flooded with people. Details about the number of applications that Ford Motor would accept were murky, as was information about the jobs available. The email stated that hundreds of workers are needed for jobs at Ford’s Chicago-based plant.
Though the streets were crowded outside, inside the building only a handful of people sat at tables in the vast application intake fair room, silently filling out papers. Representatives from Ford Motor were allowing 25 people at a time to come in and fill out applications, but Dorolyn director Earl Bounds said it was unclear how many applications they would accept. He said the jobs were described as part time, temporary positions.
Bounds also said the thick crowds that turned out at the Oak Park location were likely due to the fact that it was the only location of the five located west of Chicago’s Loop.
Outside the door, people were getting impatient because of the lack of information. Several commented that they didn’t even know what kind of jobs were available, or how many.
One woman waiting in line, Karen Thomas, said she’d been to a similar application intake fair for Ford Motor two weeks earlier, and waited in line for two hours. But because they only accepted 100 applications, she was turned away before she even got to apply.
She heard about today’s event in the newspaper, but said that once again, Ford didn’t specify the number of applications they would be accepting. And getting information while in line was proving impossible as well. But with a 13-year-old child to support, Thomas said she needs a job and reliable income.
“I don’t know if this is going to be an ongoing thing that they have, but I think it’s sort of unfair for people who are looking for employment…to stand out here like cattle and wait. You could at least let us know if you have enough applications to accommodate us before we waste our time standing out here,” she said, estimating that there were at least three or four hundred people in line.
Dr. Dorothy Bounds, president and founder of Dorolyn, said she was happy to offer the school as the application intake fair location. “When people need jobs, we’ve got to do whatever we can to help,” she said.