Post Tagged with: "Manufacturing"

REPORT: Japan’s Toyota City hurting as troubled economy, industry takes hold

March 23, 2009 at 5:37 pm

(Source: Autoblog; Photo: emrank@Flickr)

According to the Los Angeles Times, a town three hours southwest of Tokyo called Toyota City has gone from being the envy of Japan’s economy to the city with the country’s highest unemployment rate seemingly overnight. What happened? As its name implies, this town is comprised almost entirely of men and women who work for Toyota, the largest automaker in the world – the very same manufacturer that is facing its first year-long operating loss in company history.

 Because the city’s well-being rises and falls right along with the automaker that it is so dependent on, Toyota City’s finances are looking pretty dire for the upcoming year, with a projected drop in corporate tax collections of 96.3 percent. Interestingly, city officials have found an American analog with which to compare themselves: Detroit.
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US transport shows speed, scope of economic slide

March 7, 2009 at 12:19 am

(Source: Reuters) 

 This is ugly.For a picture of how rapid and steep the decline in U.S. manufacturing and retail sales has been in this recession, there are few better sectors to look at than transport.

Freight volumes — everything from raw materials to durable goods — have plummeted virtually across the board, making forecasting demand near impossible.

“We’ve downgraded our forecasts several times already this year — and it’s only March,” said John Levine, president of Pinsly Railroad Co, which owns short-line railroads in Florida, Massachusetts and Arkansas. “Business has fallen off in a way that none of us have seen.”

To weather the slump, Pinsly has cut back hours for workers so all of its 150 employees are still working, he added.

According to data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), rail carload traffic for the first two months of 2009 was down 15.8 percent.

Historical data shows the drop in U.S. manufacturing activity eclipses the recessions of the 1980s and 1970s and in terms of speed and scale it is comparable with — but not as bad as — the Great Depression before World War Two.

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Ford, UAW reach deal on health care trust

February 24, 2009 at 12:00 am
(source: USAToday.com)
DETROIT — Ford Motor (F) and the United Auto Workers union reached an agreement Monday to modify the payments on its health care trust, which could pave the way for similar agreements with General Motors and Chrysler and remove a significant stumbling block in the automakers’ attempts to comply with federal loan obligations.

At issue was how the automakers would fund a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA. Millions in cash payments were due next year, but the cash-strapped automakers were hoping to talk the union into taking equity in the companies in lieu of real green dollars.

Although the details will differ, the fact that the UAW agreed to take on stock as part of the health care trust at one automaker makes it likely the union will do the same for the other two. The UAW generally gives all three domestic automakers about the same level of concessions to ensure one company is not more financially competitive than the other two.

Under the agreement, which still has to be ratified by union members, Ford has the option of issuing up to 50% of the payment in stock rather than cash. “The agreements, if finalized, will allow Ford to become competitive with foreign automakers’ U.S. manufacturing operations, and are critical to our efforts to operate through the current deep economic downturn without accessing government loans,” says Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s group vice president of labor affairs.

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