Nummi Toyota Essay

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The Implications of NUMMI’s Downfall Today’s globalized economy and corporate culture has given rise to companies who are hungry for hyper-expansion and power. With trade agreements bridging the gap between international governments, companies have been expanding their production across continents with the mentality of maximizing profits and emerging as a corporate leader. However, one company deterred off this path of avariciousness: Toyota’s NUMMI plant thrived not on profit but on helping surrounding communities and upholding an image of mutual trust and respect between the company and its workers. With California already having the second highest rate of unemployment in the United States, currently at 12.3%, the closing of NUMMI in the midst of these troubling times brought 4,700 employees out of work and threatened more than 25,000 jobs statewide. This unfortunate choice of Toyota’s incurred a huge cost among taxpayers, whose tax dollars would be utilized to provide $2.3 billion to replace the thousands of lost jobs. “What was the reason behind NUMMI’s closure?” one may ask. Certainly it was not due to slow-selling products, financial troubles, or a deteriorating factory, for Toyota’s Corolla was the second best-selling car in the United States in 2009, and Toyota is the wealthiest automaker in the world. Toyota’s argument was that NUMMI was no longer feasible without General Motors as a partner, but the 15% of production formerly produced by GM could easily be compensated by an increase in production from NUMMI. For a plant that exuded solidarity and had the potential to revolutionize the way cars are created in this country, the closure of NUMMI was more than a mere shock. In light of NUMMI’s closure, despite it being one of Toyota’s most profitable plants, it is evident that neoliberal global capitalistic forces drove Toyota to implement a “low-road”

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