West Michigan companies add thousands of seasonal workers

West Michigan companies add thousands of seasonal workers

UPS is global logistics company with operations throughout West Michigan. Photo via fb.com

Some West Michigan companies are still adding thousands of people to their rosters for the holidays.

Domino's Pizza announced late last month that many of its franchises will be looking to hire one to five people per store for the holiday season, which translates to between 5,000 and 25,000 jobs throughout the country.

The additional hiring is due to an uptick in pizza orders that historically has made this one of the pizza chain’s busiest times of the year. Domino's said that three of its five biggest days of the year occur during this time: Thanksgiving Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

UPS is also in the midst of its busiest time of the year and is hiring part-time seasonal employees to meet the increased demand.

“Over the holiday season, we are looking to bring on 55,000 seasonal helpers,” said Andrew Hurd, content strategy supervisor at UPS. “Specifically, in Michigan, we are going to be bringing on 2,150. Primarily, those are driver helpers and package handlers as well as some driver positions. For the Grand Rapids, Holland and Muskegon region we are looking at about 317 seasonal hires.”

Hurd said that hiring for this year is on par with last year’s seasonal hiring numbers, but that package delivery will likely be larger.

“Nationally, we are expecting to be up from last year,” Hurd said. “UPS will be delivering 527 million packages around the world between Nov. 26 and Christmas Eve. This is up from last year’s record of 480 million. On peak day, Thursday, Dec. 20, we expect to deliver more than 28 million packages, up 1 million from last year. This works out to more than 300 packages per second.”

Meijer also has been doing extensive hiring during the past couple of months to prepare for the influx of holiday shoppers.

At the start of the holiday season, the store announced that it expected to hire 12,000 additional seasonal team members to fill the needs of its nearly 200 stores located in five states, with 6,000 of those jobs being in Michigan.

“Customer service is one of the things that truly sets Meijer apart from our competition,” said Janet Emerson, executive vice president of operations. “Our goal is to deliver the best customer experience and the lowest prices, and as we continue to grow, it’s so important that we have the right levels of staff and the right people in those roles.”

Meijer’s seasonal hiring for 2012 represents a significant increase from 2011, according to Frank Guglielmi, Meijer's director of public relations. He said it’s at least double last year’s hiring numbers.

Although Meijer stores began hiring seasonal employees in October, there are still locations with holiday openings. Additionally, Guglielmi said that Meijer is always looking for good people and encourages job seekers to apply any time of the year. He also notes that the retailer will be opening two new locations in Michigan in 2013.