Many of them have a skill that LaBarge was looking for when they were hired, but mostly the company just looks for dedicated hard-working employees. The Huntsville plant now employs about 20 college-educated engineers, many of whom graduated from the University of Arkansas in nearby Fayetteville.Ībout 100 employees at the Huntsville plant work to assemble products.
The work LaBarge does in Arkansas has become more high-tech over the years, Anderson said. Some of the original employees from 1978 still work at the Huntsville plant, which is considered a prized gig in mostly rural Madison County. Anderson believes women are just better at intricate work and are more patient with it than men. The other four are in Tulsa, Houston, Pittsburgh and Joplin, Mo.įemales still account for most of the employees in the Huntsville plant. The company has six plants that employ about 1,200 altogether. Sales by market were: defense, 45 percent industrial, 19 percent natural resources, 19 percent commercial aerospace, 5 percent government systems, 4 percent medical, 2 percent other, 6 percent. LaBarge had $182.3 million in sales last year, up 39 percent from the previous year. The Berryville plant, which has about 125 employees, makes cables that are often shipped to Huntsville to be assembled in harnesses, which go in everything from Black Hawk helicopters to mail sorting machines. Three years after christening the Huntsville plant, LaBarge opened a 68,000-SF facility in Berryville, 31 miles to the north in Carroll County. The 69,000-SF facility now has about 180 employees (almost a quarter of Huntsville’s workforce) and pumps an estimated $5 million a year into the local economy through wages. They did such a bang-up job, LaBarge kept sending work to Huntsville and expanding the plant. The plant’s first assignment was to make 1.5 million timers for artillery shells. Orval Faubus, had a population of about 1,500 and a college-graduation rate about half the national average, making it seem an unlikely place for a high-tech defense plant.īut the Huntsville workers proved themselves early on. The Madison County seat, best known as the hometown of former Gov. “ knew there were people in Huntsville that would stick with them and be hard workers.” “What LaBarge offered was better pay, air conditioned facilities and benefits,” said Vernon Anderson, vice president of operations.
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Plus, the hills of Arkansas were full of hard-working, patriotic people who would work for less money than their counterparts in the cities, where the cost of living was higher.
If the women could do that kind of intricate needlework by hand, the company figured, they could probably thread tiny cables in the guts of artillery shells. Department of Defense contractor was eyeing the seamstresses.
In the 1970s, the sewing industry was dying off in the Ozark Mountains, and a U.S.
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