MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
NPR's Chris Arnold visited a midsized manufacturing company in outside Boston that's been hiring back its laid-off workers.
CHRIS ARNOLD: M&H Engineering is housed inside of a completely boring, ordinary warehouse-type building by the side of the highway. Driving by, you'd never give it a thought. But inside, the factory floor is like something out of a science-fiction movie. Workers are running big computer-controlled machines and making implantable body parts.
TIMOTHY MARTENS: We have worked on artificial hearts, replacement hips, bone screws, knees.
ARNOLD: Timothy Martens helps run this family manufacturing business. It also makes other medical equipment and gear for the aerospace and computer industries. And he says that business has finally been picking up again.
MARTENS: Right now, we're at about 50 employees, running two shifts day and night. During the recession, we were down to about 25 or 27 employees, so.
ARNOLD: Really? So you really laid off half your workforce?
MARTENS: Yeah. We laid off half the workforce.
ARNOLD: Now, you might think something like bone screws or replacement hips. Those aren't things that would be too affected by a recession. But it turns out that in this recession, those orders had slowed way down, too.
MARTENS: It's amazing how you wouldn't think of it like you said, like, why would bone screws and hips slow down. People need them. But people are afraid to lose their jobs, so they're not going to leave work for three months while they rehab and do that.
ARNOLD: (Unintelligible) get the replacement hip surgery.
MARTENS: Get a replacement hip.
ARNOLD: Tim Martens' brother Michael is also a partner in the business.
MICHAEL MARTENS: We had employees that should have gone for an operation but were actually afraid of losing their job. And we told them, no, you're not going to lose your job. You know, get the hernia operation, get better.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)
ARNOLD: Across the factory floor, Mike Warren works in the shipping and receiving department. He's recently been hired back on. After working for the company for almost 20 years, he was laid off for a year and a half.
MIKE WARREN: I've got two kids at home and a wife, so it's great to be back at work. It just feels great to be able to earn my own money and feel like I'm actually a part of society and should really feel - you're kind of left out when you're out of work, so it was tough.
ARNOLD: Warren has known the business owners here since kindergarten. And the factory production manager, Mark Callahan, says like many smaller companies, just about everybody here knows each other pretty well.
MARK CALLAHAN: I know all their wives, all their children. And so when you let the guy go, see, you're thinking of his whole family. It tears your heart out, but sometimes it's what you need to do as a business, so you do it. It's great to bring them back.
ARNOLD: Callahan says, though, there's still a feeling in the air here with all these guys coming back to work that it might not last.
CALLAHAN: Believe me, these people are still nervous.
ARNOLD: Callahan says back before the holidays, he shut down a couple of the big machines here for a few weeks just for logistical reasons.
CALLAHAN: I don't know how many of them came up to me and said, jeez, Mark, you know, what's the story? You know, are we going to have Christmas, or what's the first of the year look like? They were really nervous. I'm like guys, no, no, no, don't worry. You're fine. We're not slowing down.
ARNOLD: Tim Martens.
MARTENS: They used to have a blanket order for 10,000 widgets over a year. And now, what they're going to do is they're going to do 2,000 over six months. And then all of a sudden, they'll be like, okay, we actually used those and now really they'll want another 3,000 real quickly.
ARNOLD: Michael Martens says all that uncertainty is still stifling job growth.
MARTENS: As soon as we get a little more of a comfort zone with our customers on their commitments on what they will be projecting and what they're be going to be needing from us, it will allow us to hire a bunch more people. We are waiting to be able to hire more people. We just can't have it that we have excess capacity.
ARNOLD: Chris Arnold, NPR News, Boston.