Bob Herbert
California has been very, very good to Toyota. It is one of the largest markets in the world for the popular Prius hybrid. Nearly 18 percent of all Toyotas sold in the U.S. are sold in California. The state has showered the company with benefits, including large-scale infrastructure improvements for its operations and millions of dollars for worker training. California is one of the key reasons that Toyota is the wealthiest carmaker on the planet.
Toyota is paying the state back with the foulest form of ingratitude.
The company is planning to shut down the assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., that makes Corollas and the Tacoma compact pickup. The plant closure will throw 4,700 experienced, highly skilled and dedicated employees onto the street during the worst job market since the Depression, and it will jeopardize nearly 20,000 other jobs around the state.
Some o' them Easterners must be a little slow in keeping up on pickemup trucks. The Tacoma used to be a compact pickup, but has only been a mid-size pickup for five years so I guess it's understandable that the media back there hasn't, er, picked up on it yet. Heh.
The Toyota/GM plant, NUMMI, pronounced 'noomy', not 'nummy' as in referring to their management, is where my Tacoma was built. I got my dog Maggie from one of its employees, so I have a personal connection to the workers' plight.
Those who are trumpeting the alleged fact that the recession is over should consider that the unemployment rate in California in January (the last month for which complete statistics are available) was a mind-numbing 12.5 percent. That was the fifth worst in the nation. In eight California counties, the jobless rate — not the underemployment rate, mind you, but the official jobless rate — was higher than 20 percent. Those counties are suffering through a depression.
The human toll behind such data is of no apparent interest to the fabulously wealthy Toyota operation.
Well, Mr. Herbert, you've finally caught on to Big Biz' M.O.
Please read the rest of the editorial. It has a lot in it.
My Tacoma is without a doubt the best vehicle I have ever owned. The brakes work, the throttle doesn't stick, and we installed our own floor mats (where Mrs. G found floor mats that cost a hunnert bucks a set I'll never know, but find them she did!). It doesn't rust, bust, fuck up, or stink in hot weather. I like it a hell of a lot better than I like the management of the company that built it, who have been fuckin' up by the numbers here of late. They probably smell bad too.
That said, I would probably buy another Toyota. We keep our vehicles a long, long time as in 15-20 years, so my money has to go where I perceive the most value. The management of GM, Ford, and Chrysler aren't much better and their products aren't nearly as good, all things considered, and an awful lot of them are already built in foreign countries like Canada, Mexico, and Texas as well.
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