- NUMMI Workers

NUMMI Workers

Written by administrator

Toyota to Pay California Plant Workers $250 Million (Update3)

2010-03-03 22:32:31.141 GMT

(Adds Lockyer’s request for meeting in ninth paragraph.)

By Alan Ohnsman

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s

largest carmaker said it’s providing $250 million for workers

who will lose their jobs when a former joint-venture auto-

assembly plant in California closes next month.

The money is for bonuses to salaried and hourly workers who

keep building vehicles through April 1, when Toyota’s production

contract with the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. venture

ends, the automaker said today in a statement. The plant has

4,700 employees, said Lance Tomasu, a spokesman for the factory.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, said in August that

it wouldn’t run the Fremont, California, plant, known as Nummi,

by itself as the former General Motors Corp. pulled out after 25

years. Motors Liquidation Co., which took over assets shed as

the new General Motors Co. exited bankruptcy in July, hasn’t

committed to financial aid to the factory’s workers.

“The support we are providing to Nummi underscores our

commitment to do our part,” said Jim Wiseman, a group vice

president for Toyota’s North American unit. “It is unfortunate

that neither GM -- Nummi’s other 50 percent shareholder and

customer for 25 years -- nor Motors Liquidation Company, its

current shareholder, has indicated that it will do the same.”

Nummi, California’s last large auto-assembly plant, opened

in 1984 as an experiment for GM to study Toyota’s manufacturing

system. The factory had been solely owned and operated by GM

from the early 1960s until the Detroit-based automaker closed it

in 1982.

Tim Yost, a spokesman for Detroit-based Motors Liquidation,

said in a November interview that the company “is not

contributing at all to Nummi’s closure costs.” Yost said today

that he couldn’t immediately comment on Toyota’s statement.

UAW Plant

Nummi is the only U.S. plant building Toyota vehicles with

employees represented by the United Auto Workers. The factory

makes the Toyota City, Japan-based company’s Corolla small car

and Tacoma pickup truck. GM last year stopped getting Pontiac

Vibe hatchbacks, a version of Toyota’s Matrix, from Nummi.

The plant’s closure will eliminate 25,000 jobs in

California, including at suppliers, and trim $1 billion in

revenue for the state and local communities over 10 years,

according to a study released today by a commission led by

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Harley Shaiken, a labor

professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Lockyer released a letter today that he sent to President

Akio Toyoda requesting that Toyoda or “senior staff” meet with

the state’s Toyota Nummi Blue Ribbon Commission at the company’s

headquarters in Japan on March 9.

“As convenor of the commission, I have asked a delegation

representing the commission to visit Japan on March 8 and 9,”

Lockyer said in the letter.

Toyota’s American depositary receipts rose $2.52, or

3.4 percent, to $76.94 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange

composite trading. They have declined 8.6 percent this year.

For Related News and Information:

Toyota and labor: 7203 JP <Equity> TCNI LABOR <GO>

Auto-industry regulation: TNI AUT RULES <GO>

Toyota’s U.S. market share: USMSTOYO <Index> GP <GO>

U.S. auto-sales rate: SAARTOTL <Index> GP <GO>

--With assistance from Michael Marois in Sacramento, California.

Editors: John Lear

To contact the reporter on this story:

Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at +1-323-782-4236 or

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Kae Inoue at +81-3-3201-8362 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it