While Governor Daniels is headed to Japan and Taiwan in an effort to attract jobs, this story discussing Toyota’s decision to build a new plant in Woodstock, Ontario instead of in the U.S. has disturbing implications if Toyota’s views of the American workforce are accurate and/or widespread. Basically, Toyota’s spokesman said that Canadians were easier to train than Americans and the presence of Canada’s national healthcare system added additional savings not to be found in the U.S.:
Industry experts say Ontarians are easier and cheaper to train – helping make it more cost-efficient to train workers when the new Woodstock plant opens in 2008, 40 kilometres away from its skilled workforce in Cambridge.
“The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,” said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.
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The factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.
Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun said.
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.
“Most people don’t think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage,” he said.
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