The last major auto plant in California has closed today. NUMMI, a joint project between GM and Toyota, was eventually shifted entirely to Toyota when GM pulled out of the deal. Toyota has decided that it does not need the plant on its own.
Toyota Motor Corp. has decided to close its auto plant in the Bay Area city of Fremont early next year, eliminating about 4,700 jobs and bringing large-scale automobile production in California to an end.
Executives of New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., the joint venture Toyota set up with General Motors Corp. in 1984 to operate the sprawling assembly plant, told its workforce this morning that the plant would shut down in March, according to a union member who attended the meeting. (LA Times 8/27/09)
Other than a few small auto parts plants and minor facilities, like Tesla's new facility in the bay area, the auto industry has almost completely left California. Now, we were never a huge auto manufacturing state relative to our size, but this is a landmark. However, it is symbolic of our ailing manufacturing sector.
If California is to really recover from the last 3 boom-bust cycles, we are going to need to build a truly balanced economy. We can't build it on real estate or computer programmers alone, we need it all. And a key part of that is a vibrant manufacturing sector.
Now, some of this will come with the "green jobs" expansion, but green jobs alone probably won't provide California enough of a manufacturing sector to really create a balanced economy. One would suppose that this is why politicians like John Garamendi were falling all over one another to get NUMMI to stay. They realize that this is a very real issue.
In order to create real meaningful manufacturing sector jobs, we'll need to provide companies with what we have always done well here in California: providing a qualified and abundant workforce and a good infrastructure. However, with the recent budget cuts, we are growing increasingly in danger of falling behind in both areas.
The way to really build a solid manufacturing sector isn't to engage in the race to the bottom that some states engage in, but rather to provide an excellent value with excellent resources. California can do that, but we can't keep slashing and burning through our state government and expect to stay competitive. |
