The Los Angeles Times reports Toyota has requested $2m in state training funds for workers at its NUMMI plant. The only problem? Toyota has already announced plans to close the Fremont, California, factory. The State of California’s Employment Training Panel had previously agreed to pay back the $2m Toyota spent for training at NUMMI, but since then Toyota and GM made the decision to end their joint venture at NUMMI and end production there. Toyota’s argument was summarized in a statement by NUMMI saying, “These skills have made our team members greater contributors to NUMMI and will make them more attractive to prospective employers when they conclude their employment here in April 2010.” But don’t count on that argument gaining much traction.
“This has the appearance of some kind of dreadful corporate welfare,” retorts Barry Broad, a labor union lobbyist who just so happens to serve as the panel’s acting chairman. “We can’t in good conscience give money to train people how to do jobs that are about to disappear forever.” The panel’s executive director, Brian McMahon, seems to concur, telling the LAT, “I don’t believe there are any more opportunities for [NUMMI workers] in automobile manufacturing.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered the panel to “conduct a thorough review and determine if NUMMI misled the state at any time. If so, every tool available will be used to safeguard these training resources.”
What is Japanese for handout…I mean bailout?
Cash for Clunkers?
How about this:
1.The workers move to another state which is not run by idiots and get secure jobs building cars.
2.The workers pay their taxes. Yes Virginia, employees at foreign companies working in this country pay taxes just like UAW workers do.
3.California goes to Washington for a bailout and those workers taxes end up in The Golden Shower state anyway.
I’d say CA should pay Toyota back. Another way to look at it is NUMMI fattened the coffers in Sacramento fo 25 years, Toyota should get a thank you and maybe 2 million dollars might convince Toyota to sell the plant a little cheaper.
What is Japanese for handout…I mean bailout?
The folks at Nissan can tell you.
Only 2 million….is this right? In the land of billions for bail-outs this is pocket change.
Perhaps Toyota should be paid back here, but it seems irrelevant as Toyota has no bargaining position that I can see.
I mean, what leverage does Toyota have? They can threaten to pull manufacturing out of the state. Oh right. That’s happening anyway.
Comes down to money and power. Cali has power, but no money. I can hear the Governator quoting GM on this one:
We obviously are micromanaging our cash — down to the penny, down to the minute — because that is our lifeblood
Why doesn’t Toyota get the money from the PTFOA? If it weren’t for the GM bankruptcy, NUMMI would likely not be closing.
NUMMI’s argument is: “a deal is a deal”. The training and agreement with the state that the state would pay for it already happened before GM bailed on NUMMI and before Toyota decided to hit the exits as well.
@GS650G:
No, you can’t blame the hippies in California for eating your tax dollars.
California is a Donor State
California taxpayers receive less federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid than the average state. In 2005, California taxpayers received only 78 cents in federal expenditures for every dollar in federal taxes. In 1995, by contrast, California taxpayers were receiving 94 cents in federal expenditures for each tax dollar.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/topic/15.html
I`m surprised that that Japan isn’t trying to get the manufacturing jobs back home.
Not!
If they cant build cars in a ‘second world’ country like the U.S. they would have to build new plants in…like maybe..Haiti!
NO bailout for Toyota..Period!!!
This is a no brainier….not G.M.,Ford,Chrysler,NO MONEY!
Just because you build a plant here doesn’t mean shit!
But its all politics now…………
a bad ,bad situation when we let foreign companies get our tax dollars!
I don’t think that Toyota should get any money to help retrain former workers at NUMMI.
They have a number of other options available to find the $2m.. for example they could stop being an also ran in F1
Not only that but aren’t Toyota meant to be the world’s wealthiest and best run car company?
Hey – Here’s an idea!
Toyota can declare that they’re working on an electric car and that they’re training the NUMMI workers to build it- and then get money from the Federal Government for that! The Federal Government isn’t broke like California(Sic)!
Laugh if you will but it got Fiskers $500M and they’re not even located in the United States.
It is both amusing and disheartening to see that the Japanese have ‘gone native’, and will mouth the most ridiculous justifications to glom onto the taxpayers’ money just as well as the Detroit folks.
It’ll cost $2 million to retrain NUMMI employees to work at Burger King or Jack in the Box?
faster_than_rabbit:
“California is a Donor State
California taxpayers receive less federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid than the average state. In 2005, California taxpayers received only 78 cents in federal expenditures for every dollar in federal taxes. In 1995, by contrast, California taxpayers were receiving 94 cents in federal expenditures for each tax dollar.”
I guess this shows that even the federal government knows that California is not a good investment like it used to be.