By Sally Greenberg, director of NCL
This week, while I was returning from a trip to the Bay Area in California, I couldn’t help but bemoan local news reports that Toyota was closing its sole unionized facility in the country. The factory was a Toyota and GM joint venture that opened in 1984 as an experiment for Toyota to make automobiles in the US and for GM to acquire more effective procedures from Japan. The Fremont, California-based business will lay off 4,700 employees. According to state officials in California, the ripple effect will ultimately cost the state 40,000 jobs.
On multiple levels, I find Toyota’s decision to be wholly unfair and unwarranted. First off, the automaker has profited handsomely in recent months, selling more vehicles than any other producer through the government-funded “cash for clunkers program” in the United States. Ironically, the Corolla was the most popular product and was produced in this Fremont plant. Toyota even had to hire more staff to meet the increased demand brought on by this program. Consequently, we have American auto employees who also happen to be unionized working overtime to produce cars so that this Japanese automaker may profit from a United States government subsidy, then Toyota goes and shutters the plant after the “cash for clunkers program” is done.
Second, Toyota is closing the only facility it has that is unionized, thus this is an effort to save money at the expense of the workers. The firm actually runs plants in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, and West Virginia, none of which are being shut down. The UAW has failed in its attempts to unionize Toyota in these additional states.
Although they “truly regret” having to take this decision, a spokeswoman for Toyota in North America stated that “over the mid-to long term, it would not be economically sustainable to retain the factory.” So, shut down the union plant because the pay and perks are marginally higher. That is awful. Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, stated that the Toyota workers at the plant “deserve better than to be abandoned by this firm, which has gained so abundantly from their labor, their productivity, and their devotion to quality.” I completely concur.
In This Article...
Does Toyota employ union workers?
In the US and Canada, there are two distinct auto industries: one is unionized at Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, NUMMI, and Mitsubishi. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and a few more more recent entrants make up the non-union industry.
Toyota is not a union, why?
Repairing minor defects on the sedans being produced at the Hyundai facility in this location is what Deric Golden refers to as his dream job.
He promptly sent two United Auto Workers activists packing when they attempted to convince him to sign a union card by knocking on his apartment door one day.
“Golden, 29, added, “I told them I didn’t work at the plant.” “Simply put, I had no interest.
The same narrative is repeated in each town along the southern tier of Auto Alley, a corridor that runs north-south between Lexington, Kentucky, and Montgomery along Interstates 75 and 65.
Due to large state and local incentives and a workforce known for being anti-union, foreign automakers including Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, and Volkswagen are locating their U.S. facilities in this area.
Toyota is there a union in America?
For the thousands of union workers who have been anxiously awaiting the news they did not want to hear, there will be little to celebrate on Labor Day: Toyota will shut down its Fremont, California, New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI) facility in March.
The world’s largest automaker is closing its California facility in spite of public appeals from officials, including the governor. For the first time in the car manufacturer’s
Allowing unions at Toyota?
One of the largest labor unions of the corporation is the Toyota Motor Workers’ Union, which has 63,000 members. The union holds its yearly rally in the spring, when the majority of Japanese businesses engage labor discussions, with about 3,000 members often attending, according to Nakamaru.
Are the US Honda factories unionized?
Honda and Toyota have spoken out against a Democrat-backed proposal for electric car subsidies that favors union-made autos despite having a combined capability to produce more than 3.5 million cars in the U.S.
The proposal, which was unveiled on Friday as a component of the $3.5 trillion spending package from the House Ways and Means Committee, would increase the maximum credit for battery-powered vehicles from $7,500 to $12,500 for those produced at facilities employing union workers.
For a total possible credit of $12,500, it would additionally add $500 for vehicles using battery packs manufactured with at least 50% U.S. production. The program would last for five years, after which American-made electric vehicles would receive a flat $7,500 credit.
“We need to encourage this. It advances American manufacturers, which is what we want, and it accelerates the reduction of emissions more quickly than any other program we could do “Democrat from Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee said Reuters.
Vehicles made by Honda, Toyota, and a number of other foreign manufacturers are produced in American plants that do not employ union labor.
Do Subaru plants have unions?
The auto industry has a long and illustrious history in Indiana. The state has been connected to the closely related steel and automobile sectors ever since the Studebakers established their wagon business in South Bend in the middle of the 1800s. With a UAW strike in the 1930s, the union movement made tremendous progress in the Crossroads state. It was able to become a recognized bargaining unit by General Motors thanks to the strike at a lamp factory.
Throughout the 20th century, both the steel and the auto industries plodded along, but the early 1970s gas crisis and the subsequent recession from 1979 to 1981 severely impacted both sectors, with steel suffering the most losses. Of course, the gas crisis also provided an opportunity for Japanese automakers, who were already building smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, to expand their market.
Indiana saw a little auto renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the construction of new facilities by Toyota and Subaru. More than 670,000 people from the state were employed by the car industry and its suppliers and vendors as recently as 2000. But since then, the Indianapolis Star reports that more than 130,000 jobs associated with the automobile industry have been destroyed.
Even though the state has a lengthy history of unionization, it’s interesting to note that neither the Toyota nor the Subaru plants are predominantly unionized.
The same justification is given by representatives of the three international automakers who have chosen to assemble in Indiana: The employees have not felt the need to organize.
According to Toyota’s Goss, “Our position is that it is up to our employees to decide whether or not to organize a union. ” All we can do is offer them decent jobs with benefits, which is exactly what we do. Everything else is up to them.
We leave it up to our work force, and our work force has never indicated that they want it, he added. “Certainly, the UAW has at various times suggested that they would like to unionize one of the Japanese automakers in the U.S. Going to be less of a problem as long as you have a safe workplace and everyone is treated well.
The UAW has attempted to organize workers at foreign assembly factories in the United States, but has frequently failed to pique their interest in joining the brotherhood.
According to Joe Phillippi, a principal with the automotive research and consulting firm AutoTrends, “workers have simply been unreceptive to the UAW.”
Recently, a referendum was held at Smyrna (Tennessee), and the outcome was 7030, with 70% of the employees voting against the union.
Domestic automakers criticized the Japanese in the 1980s for producing goods here but not vehicles, and they demanded a level playing field. In response, the Japanese built automobiles in the United States at lower prices utilizing non-union factories to keep the cost per unit produced below that of domestically produced cars.
The Japanese don’t prescreen applicants for employment here based on whether or not they are anti-union, according to Phillippi.
However, they do scrutinize them for attitudes supportive to teamwork. 10,000 to 20,000 applicants showed up for interviews while they needed 1,000 to 2,000 employees. They might choose from individuals who, although not anti-union, were at least not open to joining one.
The majority of the areas in which they selected to put their factories were right-to-work jurisdictions, “where it would be challenging to organize a union,” according to Phillippi.
Workers in foreign-owned U.S. factories “get close to the same hourly wage as the UAW does, but the benefits are significantly less in terms of medical and pension schemes,” according to Phillippi.
However, he claimed that there has been no need for workers to organize. The majority of plants are operating at full capacity, and teamwork is valued highly among the workforce.
No hostility exists at the factories, Phillippi claimed. “There isn’t a ‘Shut up or be fired’ clause.
There isn’t much noise to organize because they are from farms and don’t have any bad habits or mindsets from having previously put together cars, he said.
Tesla has a union?
In California, Nevada, New York, or Texas, none of Musk’s Tesla (or SpaceX) sites are currently covered by labor unions. The union represented workers at the Fremont plant when it was a General Motors facility from the 1960s until 1984 and subsequently a GM-Toyota joint venture facility from 1984 to 2009. In order for Tesla to begin producing its Model S electric sedan by 2012, Toyota sold the enormous plant to the start-up automaker in 2010.
Kia has a union?
The 30,000 unionized Kia employees are also against the investment choice and want the business to develop specific plans on how to hasten the manufacturing of EV models and hydrogen-powered cars at its local factories.
BMW has a union?
Since South Carolina is a “right-to-work” state, BMW’s facility is not unionized, unlike General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), and employee attempts to unionize in 2004 were unsuccessful.
The company’s most recent battery technology is being taught to staff as part of that growth. For the 2020 X5 xDrive45e Sports Activity Vehicle and X3 xDrive302, Spartanburg workers will assemble batteries locally, more than doubling the plant’s capacity for battery installation. Employees in this section were needed to finish a rigorous training program in robotics, electrical inline quality inspection, and battery production.