mario mendez spent 19 years assembling cars in fremont. today he brushed up his resume to go to work at the old plant, not at the old wages. before i was looking for a higher paying job. now i ve been dropping the standard and i m dropping resumes all over the place and not being picky. reporter: the lowest paid workers made $30 an hour. tesla nonunion jobs star at $12 an hour. most of the folks coming into the employment center are former workers with experience of making cars. we are applying to tesla, creating a profile, getting the user password ready for them to upload their resume so when the positions open up they will be able to apply reporter: the hiring is made possible by a 465 million dollar energy department loan that came through last week. electric car builder tesla can make more of its next generation model, which will sell for $4500, with a $7500 tax credit. the roadster costs twice as much. don t compare this loan to solyndra. at least don t do it
to get back to work doing the kind of job they love, heck they will take it. mario mendez spent 19 years assembling cars in fremont. today he brushed up his resume to go to work at the old plant, not at the old wages. before i was looking for a higher paying job. now i ve been dropping the standard and i m dropping resumes all over the place and not being picky. reporter: the lowest paid workers made $30 an hour. tesla nonunion jobs star at $12 an hour. most of the folks coming into the employment center are former workers with experience of making cars. we are applying to tesla, creating a profile, getting the user password ready for them to upload their resume so when the positions open up they will be able to apply reporter: the hiring is made possible by a 465 million dollar energy department loan that came through last week. electric car builder tesla can make more of its next generation model, which will sell for $4500, with a $7500 tax credit. the roadster co