Inside two South Seattle manufacturing plants, work is slowly building back up as the aerospace industry recovers from a disastrous downturn.
Revenue at the Pioneer Industries plants, which supply aircraft parts to Boeing and other companies, dropped by more than half due to the pandemic and two fatal 737 MAX crashes, which grounded the jets worldwide.
But a top executive says the business has had a competitive edge in weathering the storm: an eager, reliable labor force drawn largely from people who were previously incarcerated.
“When it snows, they’re there. When there’s a crisis, they’re there. They’re the first ones at work. Some of those folks get in at 4, 5 o’clock in the morning. And they just work really, really hard,” said Tony Wright, CEO of Pioneer Human Services, a nonprofit that runs several “second chance” businesses. About 60% of those businesses’ workers have criminal records, are in recovery for substance abuse or both.
When Pioneer Industries began 55 years ago, few companies were willing to hire workers who spent time in prison. That remained the case for decades, with one study showing a 27% unemployment rate in 2008 among previously incarcerated people, nearly five times the rate in the overall population.
But severe labor shortages have accelerated changing corporate attitudes.
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