Will Eddie Follow Granholm

Interesting story in the WSJ about how the Michigan Governor is going after import factories and dealing with Michigan's union image. Perhaps our Mayor can learn from her.

Toyota Considers Michigan As Site for New Engine Plant

By NORIHIKO SHIROUZU
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 7, 2006

In a symbolic move in part aimed at defusing a possible backlash against its growing success in the U.S., Toyota Motor Corp. has put Michigan among the top potential sites for a new engine plant that would create hundreds of jobs at a time when General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are cutting their work forces in North America...

The official and other executives said Toyota is considering areas around Kalamazoo and Battle Creek in part because southwestern Michigan is deemed more or less free of the influence of the United Auto Workers union. That would allow the Japanese auto maker to set up a nonunion plant just like most of the seven major manufacturing plants it operates in North America, except for one in northern California, which is run jointly with GM...

The emergence of Michigan as a potential site follows persistent courting by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. According to Toyota executives familiar with the auto maker's talks with Ms. Granholm, the governor made two trips to New York in the autumn last year to meet with Harry Otaka, a top Toyota executive in North America, and executives from Toyota's North American manufacturing operations...

Ms. Granholm, according to the same executives, pitched Michigan as a place where Toyota could set up a non-union plant depending on where it sites the plant, and asked Toyota not to look at Michigan in a stereotypical way that characterizes the state as a union-dominated place hostile to a company like Toyota.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the governor stressed Michigan is just as competitive as southern U.S. states like Alabama and Mississippi that have been successful in attracting an array of Japanese and Korean auto makers and suppliers. "Their pitch is they are non-union. But Michigan has both union and non-union shops… and we have got equally aggressive economic incentives to make the case for Toyota..."

Governor Granholm believes if Toyota builds a new engine facility [in North America], they should build it in Michigan. We have the most skilled workforce in the world and we are the automotive R&D capital in North America. We will continue to make that case to Toyota and to the world," the spokeswoman said.