State Treasurer Bill Lockyer has appointed a 10 member group that will look  into the options
for keeping Toyota’s New United Motor Manufacturing plant, the only automotive manufacturing
plant facility in the state open in Fremont past its planned March 31st closure date.

                 

Toyota which manufactures its Corolla cars and Tacoma pickup trucks at the plant, announced
in August it would close the 5 million square-foot plant. Two months earlier, its NUMMI partner
for the previous 25 years, General Motors Co., pulled out of the arrangement, citing economic
concerns. General Motors produced the Pontiac Vibe at the location.

NUMMI employs 4,700 workers, and is the only unionized workforce at a Toyota manufacturing
plant in the United States. If the plant closes, these jobs and an estimated 20,000 to 50,000
workers at other companies that supply the plant could be impacted.

State officials have already tried to persuade Toyota to keep NUMMI open by offering tax breaks
and vehicle purchase preferences, among other business incentives. Last year, three bills
introduced in the state legislature would have created a special auto manufacturing retention
zone around the NUMMI plant, providing Toyota a sales tax exemption in buying new equipment
for the plant, and requiring state agencies to give preference to purchasing vehicles
manufactured in California. NUMMI is the only automotive manufacturing plant in the state.

The Commission held its first meeting this week at the California Public Utilities Commission office
in San Francisco, during which commission members took public testimony about the plant shutdown.
Additionally, the Commission members are scheduled to visit the company headquarters in Japan.

The commission will be chaired by University of California at Berkeley labor economist professor,
Harley Shaiken. Other commission members include Fremont mayor, Bob Wasserman; actor
Danny Glover; the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow of the Presbyterian Church USA; Victor Uno, chairman
of the Port of Oakland's board of commissioners; Nina Moore, legislative director of the Fremont
Chamber of Commerce; Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of
California; Bruce Kern, executive director of the East Bay Economic Development Alliance; Carl Pope,
president of the Sierra Club; and Art Pulaski, chief officer of the California Federation of Labor.

Meanwhile, a Toyota official said before a congressional hearing it would not reverse plans to end
production in California despite a suggestion from Californian congressman Jerry McNerny that
doing so might give the embattled carmaker a lift in a big market.

                                               

"It's not financially viable to do," Jim Lentz, Toyota's U.S. sales chief, told a congressional hearing on
Toyota recalls and other safety questions that have jolted the automaker's reputation for quality and
hurt sales. "It was General Motors abandoning NUMMI that set this in play," Lentz said, adding that the
facility as a stand-alone is a long way from Toyota's supplier network.

Production is shifting to Texas, Canada and Japan. Lentz said Toyota does not take the closure lightly
and would help affected workers through the transition. Toyota employs 30,000 at 10 plants in the U.S.

But the effort is also being advanced on yet another front.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle,
Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson met last week with an Asian auto official - company and
country unnamed, except it's not China. Carson said he plans to meet with the company's top
management in the next month.

Andrew Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle stated in his article from February 23rd that given 
Supervisor Carson's silence to release any information that maybe it's Hyundai Motor Co., and/or its
affiliate KIA Motor Corp. whose products have been making impressive inroads in the United States,
as the mushrooming number of their dealers in the Bay Area attests? Ross claims the South Korean
companies' market share is still comparatively small (7.5 percent in the United States), but it was the
third fastest growing auto company last year in terms of units manufactured, behind Volkswagen and
Ford, and were two of the only three brands, along with Subaru, to see an increase in U.S. sales.



tjohnson@californiabusinessminute.com