Here is a very interesting story that may give us some hope that all is not lost in the auto industry for Windsor. We just need to look at the issue differently. Frankly, the R & D reputations of the University and St. Clair College can help us immensely to attract new business here if we play it smartly!
GM, Ford aside, U.S. auto industry is doing just fine
By Daniel Howes / The Detroit News
Here, in the epicenter of America's alleged automotive meltdown, grows the belief that the death of the American auto industry is nigh.
You hear it on radio, TV and from politicians. You see it in the newspapers and feel it in the community. It is, in short, pure gospel to the fatalists who equate the health of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. -- and only GM and Ford -- with the American auto industry.
Except that it's not true. GM and Ford, in the throes of wrenching change, may be "the auto industry" to the industrial Midwest, Michigan and Metro Detroit. But out there on the fruited plain, far from Detroit's half-empty assembly plants, recurring retrenchments and tiresome labor-management battles, the auto industry in America goes by other names, too, and it's doing fine.
With each monthly sales report and each passing year, the painful reality is that the auto industry in America is less Detroit and more foreign-owned, less United Auto Workers and more non-union. The forces threatening to gut Detroit as we know it are not the entire auto industry's problems. They are Detroit's, and their fixes will be painful.
The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor estimates that foreign-owned automakers and suppliers it dubs "the internationals" could account for nearly 40 percent of the nation's 1 million automotive jobs by 2010, up from 27 percent today.
As a whole, the industry could employ more people nationwide by 2012 than any time in history, but Detroit's -- and organized labor's -- share of that employment are likely to be at all-time lows.
Right now, the internationals employ roughly 250,000 across the country -- some 93,000 of them in and around assembly plants -- and produce nearly 5 million cars and trucks each year, double what they built a decade ago.
"Since 2000, they have been the only auto companies growing employment in the U.S. motor vehicle industry," says Sean McAlinden, the think tank's vice president for research. "Everyone else has declined."
He estimates that the internationals -- Toyota, Honda and Nissan of Japan, Hyundai and Kia of South Korea, BMW and Mercedes-Benz of Germany -- could, among them, add another eight to 10 assembly and parts plants in the United States over the next few years while GM and Ford are likely to cut almost as many, mostly in the Midwest.
No, the auto industry in America is not in decline. Its fastest growing chunk is booming and shifting the industry's employment base south. Overall, the industry is boosting its productivity faster than the nation's gross domestic product is growing, according to government statistics.
Scant comfort, that, because higher productivity typically means fewer jobs.
By Daniel Howes / The Detroit News
Here, in the epicenter of America's alleged automotive meltdown, grows the belief that the death of the American auto industry is nigh.
You hear it on radio, TV and from politicians. You see it in the newspapers and feel it in the community. It is, in short, pure gospel to the fatalists who equate the health of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. -- and only GM and Ford -- with the American auto industry.
Except that it's not true. GM and Ford, in the throes of wrenching change, may be "the auto industry" to the industrial Midwest, Michigan and Metro Detroit. But out there on the fruited plain, far from Detroit's half-empty assembly plants, recurring retrenchments and tiresome labor-management battles, the auto industry in America goes by other names, too, and it's doing fine.
With each monthly sales report and each passing year, the painful reality is that the auto industry in America is less Detroit and more foreign-owned, less United Auto Workers and more non-union. The forces threatening to gut Detroit as we know it are not the entire auto industry's problems. They are Detroit's, and their fixes will be painful.
The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor estimates that foreign-owned automakers and suppliers it dubs "the internationals" could account for nearly 40 percent of the nation's 1 million automotive jobs by 2010, up from 27 percent today.
As a whole, the industry could employ more people nationwide by 2012 than any time in history, but Detroit's -- and organized labor's -- share of that employment are likely to be at all-time lows.
Right now, the internationals employ roughly 250,000 across the country -- some 93,000 of them in and around assembly plants -- and produce nearly 5 million cars and trucks each year, double what they built a decade ago.
"Since 2000, they have been the only auto companies growing employment in the U.S. motor vehicle industry," says Sean McAlinden, the think tank's vice president for research. "Everyone else has declined."
He estimates that the internationals -- Toyota, Honda and Nissan of Japan, Hyundai and Kia of South Korea, BMW and Mercedes-Benz of Germany -- could, among them, add another eight to 10 assembly and parts plants in the United States over the next few years while GM and Ford are likely to cut almost as many, mostly in the Midwest.
No, the auto industry in America is not in decline. Its fastest growing chunk is booming and shifting the industry's employment base south. Overall, the industry is boosting its productivity faster than the nation's gross domestic product is growing, according to government statistics.
Scant comfort, that, because higher productivity typically means fewer jobs.
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