According to a new independent study released today, GE employs some 8,200 workers in Texas. Make that 8,300. GE said this morning that it would hire 100 engineers, designers, and support staff at a new $10 million GE Oil & Gas training facility in Houston. The new center, which is set to open in the second half of this year, will train workers and leaders for GE’s growing oil and gas operations.
GE has deep roots in Houston. The company has been growing and adding jobs in the area for over a century. But GE expansion applies to all of Texas. Last year, GE Transportation announced that it would spend $190 million on two new factories in Fort Worth and create as many as 900 manufacturing jobs there. One plant will make GE’s fuel-efficient Evolution Series locomotives and other rail equipment. The second plant will build electric motorized wheels powering million-pound mining trucks. The wheels tower 13 feet and weigh over 100,000 pounds.
Companies like the Houston-based Ameriforge are already bidding to supply the new plants with parts and create new jobs of their own. Gean B. Stalcup, president and CEO of Ameriforge, said that he would hire as many as 80 workers at his Houston plant to manufacture torque tube assemblies and hubs for the mining trucks.
