and it isn’t so long ago that I marveled at the US becoming cheap(er) offshore labor for European manufacturers (when Mercedes built its M-class plant in Alabama).
Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?
[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project… Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use ‘pictorials’ to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
(Also a contributing factor — Canada’s national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)
To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region’s zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains — Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it’s not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
Where else do Japanese (or other) manufacturers build car plants and how do they fare with their local workers?
And how many workers at, say an Alabama Mercedes plant, are in a position to, or have the desire to, buy one?
Now playing: Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (KEXP Version) by The Flaming Lips from the album “Yoshimi Wins: Live Radio Sessions”
[composed and posted with ecto]