THE ‘BUY AMERICAN’ PUSH : The Workers’ View : At Japanese-Owned Plants, U.S. Employees Are Caught in Cross-Fire
With red, white and blue “Buy American” banners waving across the land, workers at Japanese-owned auto plants in the United States are finding themselves in the cross fire.
Toyota Corollas are made along with Geo Prizms by more than 3,000 United Auto Workers members at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. factory in Fremont, Calif.--a 50-50 venture between Toyota and General Motors. Yet many car shoppers label those Corollas Japanese.
Asked Friday how workers at the plant feel about the burgeoning “Buy American” push, a UAW official at NUMMI responded emphatically and a bit defensively:
“We’re not making Japanese products,” said George Nano, chairman of the bargaining committee for UAW Local 2244, which represents the NUMMI workers. “We’re making American products. This is an American plant.”
Similarly, a “Buy American” protest earlier this week at Mazda’s assembly plant near Detroit triggered an angry confrontation with workers.
“Are they mad at us for accepting a good job?” asked Phil Keeling, president of UAW Local 3000, which represents about 3,200 workers at the plant. “Do they want Mazda to close down or something? We’re in a tricky position. We’re American workers working for a Japanese company making American cars. ‘Buy American’ suits us just fine: Buy our cars.”
Besides, Keeling added, the auto industry is getting more complicated. When you can buy a Plymouth made in Mexico with a Japanese engine and a transmission from Indiana, it’s tough to tell any more what is an American car.
Given that, pity the one charged with enforcing a 1990 rule, ignored until Friday, of a Detroit-area UAW local: Henceforth, union members who drive foreign cars will not be allowed to park them next to domestic models at the Ford Motor Co. assembly plant in the suburb of Wayne, Mich.
“What really prompted us to start enforcing this thing was when the Japanese member of Parliament made that statement about American people being lazy and illiterate,” said Jeff Washington, president of Local 900. “My membership is hot.”
The sensitivity on both sides is easy to understand, auto industry observers say, given the anti-Japanese rhetoric and the building frustration over trade issues in the wake of President Bush’s ill-fated odyssey to Japan. Americans working in Japanese plants in the United States are likely to be feeling a fair amount of inner turmoil.
“My guess is that a U.S. worker in a Honda plant or a Toyota plant today has the kinds of feelings that a Japanese-American has all the time,” said William G. Ouchi, a professor of management at the UCLA Graduate School of Business. “The Japanese look at him and don’t consider him to be Japanese. The American looks at him and doesn’t consider him to be American. It’s a very difficult position in which to be.”
The University of Michigan estimates Japan’s auto-related U.S. investment at $19 billion and employment at 102,000, most of it in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s a safe bet that, having witnessed the demise of countless plants run by Detroit’s Big Three, most of those workers are downright grateful for their jobs.
Just ask Fred Farley, 36, a worker at Honda’s Marysville, Ohio, plant, where the company builds the Civic and the Accord, the top-selling car in America.
“They really made it possible for me to get a job in a depressed area and be able to move back here and live with my family,” Farley said. “My dreams are coming true because they located here, and it really concerns me that people are becoming almost racist about it.”
Groves reported from San Francisco, and Times staff writers Donald Woutat and Amy Harmon reported from Detroit.
