CNNs Lou Dobbs outsourced his error-prone anti-free market services
to a competing network with a January 23 guest appearance on ABCs
Good Morning America to discuss Ford Motor Companys (NYSE:
F) layoffs. The business anchor assigned some fault to the high
cost of unionized labor and to poor management at the nations No. 2
automaker, but mostly laid the blame at the feet of free-trade
policies which permitted foreign car makers to locate in
right-to-work states where the atmosphere is anti-union.
Dobbs should have done his homework the night before:
Toyota (NYSE:
TM) and Honda (NYSE:
HMC) have extensive manufacturing operations in
non-right-to-work states, with Toyota planning to add more jobs at
existing facilities in those states.
On January 17, Toyota issued a
press release reporting that 1,558,828 vehicles and 1,295,227
engines were produced in 2005 at its North American plants, adding
that Both figures represent new record production levels for
Toyota, which began North American production in 1985.
Of Toyotas North American manufacturing, roughly 79
percent of vehicles and 70 percent of engines were assembled in
non-right-work states such as California, Indiana, Kentucky and West
Virginia. The rest of the vehicles were assembled in Canada or
Mexico. Toyotas plant in Alabama, a
right-to-work
state, produces just 13 percent of Toyotas engines.
American Honda Motor Company maintains engine and vehicle
assembly plants in Ohio and emissions testing facilities in Michigan
and Colorado. All three of those states are non-right-to-work
states, according to the National Right to Work Foundation, which
defines a right-to-work law as one that secures the right of
employees to decide for themselves whether or not to join or
financially support a union.
According to the January 17 release, Toyota is
expanding operations at plants in both union and non-union states in
2006, adding 150 new jobs in West Virginia for transmission gear
production and a total of 800 workers for an expanded engine plant
in Alabama.
While also bemoaning free trade at any cost, Dobbs
repeated his worries about the Chinese auto company Geely, which is
slated to sell cars in the United States within the next several
years. But as the
Associated Press reported on January 16, Ford Motor Co. brand
sales in China rose 46 percent last year to 82,225 vehicles. That
growth beat the local car industry, whose sales expanded about 14
percent last year, the AP noted, citing the China Association of
Automobile Manufacturers.
American car buyers dissatisfied with Fords product
line are not all that likely to purchase a Chinese vehicle that its
own countrymen find substandard. The
Business & Media Institute previously documented why Dobbss worries
are overblown.
CNNs Dobbs Blames Free Trade, Non-Union Labor for Fords Woes
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