Asian Carmakers Find Haven in South

[Pirate Smile]

Asian Carmakers Find Haven in South

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A01

As profits fall and sales slump at General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., thousands of autoworkers gathered in Montgomery, Ala., yesterday to celebrate the opening of a $1.1 billion factory to build Hyundais.

The Alabama factory, the first in the United States for the South Korean company, is the latest in a parade of foreign-owned facilities springing up throughout the South. Each one -- Nissan Motor Co. opened a factory in 2003 in Mississippi, a Toyota Motor Corp. truck plant cranks up next year in Texas -- is another sledgehammer swing at the crumbling fortunes of Ford and GM.

A new U.S. auto industry is emerging in which no single company is as dominant as GM once was and the lines between foreign and domestic manufacturers are increasingly blurred. While Detroit suffers, the rest of the industry is doing rather well. Jobs and factory production are down in Michigan but rising in the South.

"It's a zero-sum game," said Walter McManus of the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Detroit's factories already build more vehicles than they can sell, so 300,000 new Hyundai Sonatas flowing out of Alabama every year will just make GM and Ford have to cut their own production further, he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001490.html

[Conservativesux]

1. Are these new auto factories employing UAW workers or not?

[susanna]

2. Nope.

I work in the auto industry (north), and my family is from the south (Alabama and Tennessee).

The south is an anti-union hotbed, so to speak. The foreign players love it...the workers do not dare participate when a few of their co-workers try to sell the idea of union representation.

IMHO, the south IS rising again...in defense of corporations. :-(

edited for clarity

[Conservativesux]

3. That's what I thought. I cannot understand the mentality of Americans

who think unionization is a bad idea.

I suppose thats why Walmart workers make so much money they have to give it away, and have excellent medical health-care benefits to boot :(

[davsand]

5. This is exactly why I still buy only American made.

Part of it was always a bias on my part because I remember when foreign cars were tough to find parts for. Mostly, however, it was always because if you bought American made you knew you were supporting the American workers who MADE those cars. In part, it was also a sort of survival thing to buy American.

We used to have a GM plant about 20 miles from here. It was a major employer and a source of great pride. The labor unions in that town were very strong, very well organized, and they pretty much dominated the political landscape there. If you ever went over to the county for any kind of political event or organizing meeting it was probably held at one of the labor halls.

You were not allowed to park anything in that parking lot that wasn't an American made car. More than once I saw Dems from the neighboring county have to go out and move their foreign car out of the parking lot and onto the street. There were a couple of times that people left because of it, but the party and the unions really didn't care--this was THEIR turf.

That was many years ago.

Now, if you go to that county, the unions are not as strong and that car plant is closed. However, I don't care WHAT County I'm in, if I'm going to a union hall, I feel a whole lot better about parking my Ford or my Buick on one of those lots. I display "Union YES!" Bumper stickers on all my cars and you can bet I am not putting those on anything made by non-UAW members.

Its an old habit, but its one that will stay with me as long as I can sustain it. When you buy American you are supporting American workers--period. The same goes for clothing or textiles or any kind of other product, but a lot of otherwise smart consumers seem to forget that. It isn't easy, and it isn't always possible (sometimes) but I fail to understand WHY so many people don't understand why it is important to support the Unions or even American workers.

Forgive my rant--but this is a big issue for me.


Laura

[Conservativesux]

7. I understand completely. Thats why I shop and buy at Union stores too.

And I drive American made vehicles, not foriegn scrap iron.

[susanna]

8. There is a book called...

"The Mind of the South." I think the author's name was Nash, but I'll have to double-check. It isn't an easy read, but it makes interesting hypothoses of the south's peculiarities in a way that many people might find informative.

It was written back in the 30s or 40s, can't remember, and there was a whole section on unionization and the textile mills of the time.

Just an FYI.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. From the front-page article, re. workers --

"'There's a touch of unfairness to all this,' McManus said. That's because the rules are different for outsiders building new plants than they are for old-timers dealing with an aging infrastructure and workforce, such as GM and Ford.

Hyundai's non-unionized plant, for example, will pay most of its 2,000 employees a starting wage of $14.46 an hour, far below the $20-plus hourly wages for comparable United Auto Workers members in Michigan. The Hyundai workers also will have to contribute $14.54 every two weeks for health coverage, which is free to employees under UAW contracts.

There is no pension available to the Hyundai workforce; instead, employees have a 401(k) plan.

By contrast, GM, Ford and the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler AG carry more than 800,000 retirees and family members on their pension rolls at a total cost of $11 billion per year. The companies estimate that about $1,500 of the cost of building each vehicle goes toward health care -- several times what Hyundai pays."

[Toots]

6. Both Ford and GM have plants in the south but they still hire Union

I would suggest we honor Unions as well. Buying foreign anything creates a race to the bottom as far as wage and benefits goes. If you truly support America and it's goals buy american and especially support Unions. Might cost more but as the fundies are so fond of saying freedom is not free.