A Factory Like a City

In August, Toyota announced it would close the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Fremont, California, after General Motors announced it was withdrawing from the partnership under which the plant had operated for over two decades. The plant employs 4,500 workers directly—and the jobs of another 30,000 throughout northern California are dependent on its continued operation. Taking families into account, the threatened closure will eliminate the incomes of over 100,000 people.

People have spent their lives at the NUMMI plant, some with more time at their workstations than with their families at home. The plant is like a city, thousands of jobs and thousands of people working in a complicated dance where each one's contribution makes possible that of the next person down the line. And like a city, it has supported the people who work in it.

A NUMMI job brings the paycheck that pays the mortgage and the (now astronomical) tuition for kids in college. A NUMMI job makes possible the friendships that grow over years of laboring in the same workplace. Working at NUMMI means being part of the union, with all the frustrations and infighting, but also the ability to pull together to get the contract that makes an industrial job bearable, and that ensures a kid's visit to a doctor or dentist doesn't bottom out the family bank account.

General Motors used to run this plant in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was GM Fremont. It was a feisty plant with a feisty union and a lynchpin for years in the movement to stop concessions in union bargaining. When GM closed the plant the first time, in the early 1980s, many thought it was revenge. Afterwards, autoworkers from Fremont became migrants. Many lived a lonely existence in motels in Oklahoma City or Texas, trying to hold onto seniority in a union auto job, sending money back home to families in California. Others lost their homes and worse. In the wave of plant closures of the early 1980s, the Department of Commerce even kept statistics on how many people committed suicide for every thousand who lost jobs when their plant shut down.

When GM and Toyota announced their partnership to reopen the plant, desperation was so great that people agreed to a union contract outside the national pattern before the lines started moving. Big concessions to the "Japanese style of management" often pitted workers against each other and against their union. It took years to fight those problems out with management.

When GM withdrew from its partnership with Toyota, everyone knew that spelled trouble. What sense did it make for GM to withdraw from a plant that consistently made vehicles that sold well? The GM bailout put the company under managers with no concern for keeping people working and plants open. Making GM profitable again meant getting dividends and profits flowing to a tiny group of bankers and investors, who already had more money than they could spend. Keeping production going at low-cost plants outside the U.S. would bring that profitability back at the cost of the jobs and welfare of tens of thousands. Whose interest was our government serving with such a bailout? Even in France the conservative Sarkozy told French automakers they had to keep the factories running if they wanted a government subsidy.

Without a GM partner, Toyota is moving to close the only plant it owns in the U.S. with a union. And they just got a big taxpayer-funded present, too. More vehicles sold under the Cash for Clunkers program were Corollas made at the NUMMI plant than any other model. The Administration and Congress voted to throw $3 billion at Toyota and the other auto giants to reduce car prices and increase sales. But there was no requirement that the subsidy come with a commitment to keep the people working who made the cars they sold.

If Toyota doesn't want to make cars in Fremont, why not put the plant to use making busses or railcars for BART and local transit systems (for which taxpayers have already agreed to give up billions of dollars)? If Toyota and GM don't want to give up the plant or put it to that use, then a true government commitment would be to use its power of eminent domain to take it over and ensure that the abilities of its workers don't go to waste.

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David Bacon is a freelance writer and photographer.