LOS ANGELES AND FREMONT, CALIF. — America's auto crisis has stretched beyond the Midwest all the way to California.
The state's last automobile plant is facing potential closure after General Motors Corp. said Monday that it would drop out of the joint venture with Toyota Motor Corp. that operates the factory and builds three vehicles there.
The troubled automaker will produce its final Pontiac Vibe at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI, by the end of August. Whether Toyota plans to keep building its Corolla sedans and Tacoma small pickups at the Fremont, Calif., plant is still being decided.
The Japanese automaker has long resisted layoffs and closures. But given the high costs of manufacturing in California, the dearth of surrounding parts suppliers and the fact that the Northern California factory is Toyota's only unionized facility in the U.S., many experts worry that the company may follow GM's lead and exit the Golden State.
If a shutdown occurs, it will be yet another blow to California's struggling economy, costing 5,400 jobs at NUMMI as well as 30,000 jobs indirectly tied to the factory, according to the East Bay Economic Development Alliance.
It would also serve as a reminder that the auto industry's woes are hardly limited to Michigan and the states it borders. Detroit-based GM has slated 14 plants for closure as part of its restructuring, but most have been limited to the Rust Belt, where most of the 100,000-plus industry layoffs in the last year have occurred. Losing the NUMMI plant, long hailed for reinventing the way cars could be built in America, would drive the misery to the Pacific.
"We've been able to escape the industry's very significant downsizing so far," said Steve Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. "Now we're finally getting hit by the global auto shakedown."
NUMMI delivered the news to its employees at a lunch meeting Monday. As the first shift ended, many of the plant's 4,100 members of the United Auto Workers stepped into the hot summer sun with grim expressions.
"People are stressing. I'm stressing," said Roberto Gonsalves, who delivers auto parts to the assembly line. "We don't know what to expect."
GM and Toyota opened NUMMI in 1984 on the site of a former GM plant that had a reputation as one of the least efficient in the country.
