TPT March 2011

G lobal M arketplace

action against Halliburton and its chief executive. The justices are expected to hear arguments in the case in April, with a ruling due by the end of June. The Obama administration had urged the Supreme Court to hear the appeal by the plaintiffs.

Mr St Angelo also pointedly observed to the Times ’s Detroit editor Nick Bunkley that Toyota did not lay off any employees during the recent recession: not even when it temporarily stopped running some plants to let inventories thin out. The Japanese company has five assembly plants in the United States. A UAW-represented plant in California that was operated as a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors closed last year, and the union has been pressuring Toyota to rehire its workers when the plant reopens to build electric vehicles in a partnership with Tesla. › Mr Bunkley drew attention to something that may complicate Toyota’s response to the union’s recruitment effort: in Japan, the Toyota Motor Workers’ Union has more than 60,000 members. Mr King of the UAW said that car makers who operate with unions in their home countries but discourage unionisation in the United States are treating their American workers like “second-class global citizens.” (“UAW to Renew Organizing Efforts at Foreign-Owned Plants,” 12 January) Other automotive news . . . › At the North American International Auto Show, held in Detroit in January, Volkswagen introduced a midsize sedan designed specifically for American consumers. The awkwardly named 2012 Passat – new body, same nameplate – is to be made at a $1 billion factory going up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It will be the first car that Volkswagen builds in the US since the 1980s. By expanding in the United States, Volkswagen can avoid high German labour costs and position its newcomer to compete on price with the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata – as well as with improved midsize sedans from General Motors and Ford. The base price of the new entry in that segment is expected to be about $20,000, some $7,000 under the starting price for the “old” Passat. › Honda Motor Co, of Japan, is selling its 26% stake in Hero Honda Motors, its longtime joint venture with the Hero Group, India’s leading maker of motorcycles. The buyer is the Munjal family, current owners of an equal 26% stake in Hero. While there was no disclosure of details of the transaction, to be completed this year, Honda’s holding in the company is worth approximately $2 billion. The joint venture was formed in 1984, in response to Indian legislation that barred foreign companies from establishing subsidiaries in the country without a native partner. These rules were later relaxed, leading to the formation of Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India in 1999, which established Honda’s operation on an independent basis. On the biking site visordown.com (17 December), Christopher Dodd took note of speculation that the expansion of Honda’s 100%-owned subsidiary had put strain on the Honda-Hero partnership in recent years. Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India has an estimated 13% share of sales in India, the world’s #2 market for the two-wheelers. Dorothy Fabian , Features Editor (USA)

Automotive With the US automotive industry on the rebound, a labour union flexes its muscles – perhaps prematurely Having seen its numbers fall from a high of 1.5 million in 1979 to around 350,000 today, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) is actively renewing a campaign to sign up workers at US plants owned by foreign-based car companies, mainly in the southern states of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky. Union leaders believe themselves to be in good trim for the effort. The UAW has largely abandoned the featherbedding demands that roiled its negotiations with General Motors, Chrysler and Ford and alienated the efficiency-minded Asian car companies that have turned themselves into strong rivals to the Big Three. It is possible to see this membership initiative as misconceived – in timing as well as tone. Abailout by Washington only narrowly rescued the US automotive industry, and the near-death experience is still fresh in many minds and nervous systems. Moreover, “human rights abuses” is a heavily freighted expression, perhaps especially in the American South. Yet this is the charge that the UAW leadership is apparently prepared to raise with Japanese, Korean and German auto companies with factories across the southern states. Their offence? An allergy to labour unions. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan and BMW all have plants in the US, all non-union and mainly in the South. Bob King, the UAW president, speaking 12 January at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, said that the union intended to present the companies with certain demands. The non-compliant among them would, he said, be branded as human rights violators. Demonstrations, and campaigns against them among the buying public, would follow. “I would be very, very concerned if I was an auto manufacturer,” Mr King told the industry group in Detroit, “[about] having young people, college students, young college graduates, feel that I was a human rights violator.” The UAW released a list of 11 principles “for fair union elections” that it wants the foreign-based manufacturers to adopt, and said it had set aside $60 million of its strike fund to spend on organising efforts within the plants of those companies. The stated aim is to enable workers to decide – without intimidation or fear of reprisal – whether or not they wish to unionise. › Steve St Angelo, Toyota’s top manufacturing executive in the United States, had no immediate comment on the UAW initiative, but he did note that his company has a set of principles of its own – known as The Toyota Way. “Those principles have worked very well for us over the years,” he told the New York Times. “We provide competitive wages and benefits.”

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