Twenty-five thousand jobs and $2.3 billion dollars. That's what California stands to lose if Toyota follows through with its plan to shut down the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), plant in Fremont at the end of the month, according to a study released today by a Blue Ribbon Commission. The Commission, appointed by State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, was tasked with assessing the economic, social, and environmental costs of Toyota's planned closure of the state's only auto assembly plant.
UC Berkeley Professor Harley Shaiken, chair of the Blue Ribbon Commission:
NUMMI is in the heart of Toyota's most important U.S. market, NUMMI has Toyota's most skilled and experienced workforce in the country - one that has consistently won industry acclaim for quality - and California is at the cutting edge of both technological innovation and the green future the company wants to lead. NUMMI and its highly experienced and skilled workers should be valued by Toyota as a key asset for the company as it struggles to reestablish its reputation for quality and green innovation.
The Commission's report validates what we already know -- there are no good reasons for closing NUMMI and many good ones for keeping it open.
For more than 25 years, thousands of workers in northern California have committed their lives to producing high-quality Toyotas at the Bay Area's New United Motor Manufacturing Inc (NUMMI) auto plant, and hundreds of thousands of car-buying Californians have made Toyota the #1 car company in the state. So when Toyota announced last year that it plans to close down the NUMMI plant on April 1, 2010, the company dealt an undeserved punch in the gut to California's workers and consumers, not to mention our state's already faltering economy.
Toyota's plan to close down NUMMI is the latest in a string of remarkably poor management decisions from the Japanese automaker, which is still in the hot seat after the recent rash of recalls of millions of Toyota vehicles worldwide. As the company struggles to regain consumer confidence, Toyota has absolutely nothing to gain by closing the plant, and both Toyota and California have just about everything to lose.
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.
(It looks like this might happen... - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
When Toyota announced last month it was considering closing the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Fremont, the focus was on the potential loss of the 4,700 critical regional jobs at the auto plant, and understandably so. But the ripple effect of NUMMI's closure wouldn't stop in the Bay area. Most counties in the state have a vendor that serves NUMMI in one capacity or another, and if the plant closes, California will face an estimated loss of another 20,000 to 35,000 jobs indirectly.
Of the approximately 1,186 supplier companies with NUMMI contracts, all but five are in California. Of the 35 California counties home to at least one NUMMI supplier, the five counties with the most suppliers include Alameda (389), Santa Clara (204), Los Angeles (126), Contra Costa (79), and Orange (73). And of course, all corners of our state will feel the strain of lost tax revenue and an increased reliance on social services.
The legislature has authored bills to help. Senator Elaine Corbett's (D-San Leandro) SB 483 would create an enterprise zone in Fremont, while Assemblymember Alberto Torrico's (D-Fremont) ABX4 31 would provide a sales and use tax exemption for capital equipment used by automobile manufacturers. Senator Roderick Wright's (D-Los Angeles) SB 830 creates an enterprise zone and tax benefit incentives for automobile manufacturing plants within California.
John Garamendi has been seeking votes in California for well over 30 years. He first took a run for the Governor's mansion in 1982, and was set to do so again in 2010 until the seat in CA-10 opened up, and he was inspired to return to Washington, where he served in the Clinton Administration in the Department of the Interior. He has the most diverse record of anybody in the race, with stints at the federal level, the state legislature, and in two statewide offices, as the Insurance Commissioner and now Lieutenant Governor. In our interview, we discussed health care, lessons learned from regulating insurance, No Child Left Behind, saving the NUMMI plant in Fremont (more on that from Garamendi here), and foreign policy in Iran. I found Garamendi to come at issues in a very comprehensive and thoughtful way, and you can see this for yourself below. A paraphrased transcript follows. (flip it)
