Ohio Plant To Move Jobs To Japan

[OhioChick]

POSTED: 10:45 am EST February 27, 2008
UPDATED: 12:40 pm EST February 27, 2008

MARYSVILLE, Ohio -- Honda Motor Co. plans to stop producing motorcycles in the United States next year and will transfer production to Japan, the automaker announced Wednesday.

Honda currently makes motorcycles at its plant in Marysville, Ohio, employing 450 workers.

Honda said there will be no layoffs when production ends in spring 2009. The workers will remain with the company, helping produce cars, trucks, engines and parts and filling other jobs at Honda's other operations in west-central Ohio, the company said.

The motorcycle plant opened in 1979 as Honda's first U.S. plant. Last year, it produced about 44,000 Gold Wing touring and VTX cruiser bikes.

Honda said motorcycle production at the Marysville plant and at the Hamamatsu factory in Japan will be consolidated at a new motorcycle plant in Kumamoto, Japan, in 2009. It is part of a global plan to produce certain larger motorcycles, Honda said.

"This move allows us to improve the competitiveness and appeal of our products by applying the latest technologies and production systems at one efficient location," said Akio Hamada, president and CEO of Honda of America.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/15424589/detail.html

[MadMaddie]

1. 450 more American workers out of a job....

and it never stops.

[leftofcool]

3. The article said

no one would be layed off. They will all retain jobs within Honda in different areas.

Left of Cool

[OhioChick]

5. Give it a Week or So....

And I'll bet those jobs will be eliminated and sent overseas. Happens all the time.

[MadMaddie]

7. That usually means they will train someone else to do their jobs

and then they will start laying off a worker here or there. Workers will get let go for minor infractions etc...nah they have to put the press out so it doesn't sound so bad.

[asthmaticeog]

6. 1) The workers are being redeployed elsewhere in the company

2) We shouldn't outsource to Asia, but Asia should outsource to the U.S.? ;)

Look, I'm from Ohio, if these workers DO get laid off, it'll bother me, but they haven't been. Honda buys a LOT of steel in Ohio and has other manufacturing here. There are companies that are being way worse to our state than Honda.

[DainBramaged]

9. Ask Honda how much they pay in taxes here

Ask Honda about the subsidies they get to build in Ohio. And ask them why they are so against the UAW organizing there.

[asthmaticeog]

10. Ask any corporation those questions.

I'm not saying they're stainless, just that they're FAR from the biggest enemy we have.

[DainBramaged]

11. THEY, as all Japannese companies are, are anti-Union

That alone makes them THE enemy.

[asthmaticeog]

12. And the workers at Ford? How have their unions stopped all the layoffs?

They haven't. All USA companies are anti-union, too, they're just biding their time until the unions that are grandfathered in can be destroyed. Every corporation does and always will act entirely in its own self-interest, and embracing collective bargaining for their employees will never be a part of that. It's the fault of our government (and of union hubris to a degree), not the Japanese, that our unions have been crippled so.

[DainBramaged]

13. America decided to stop buying Ford products

and buy transplanted Japanese, Korean and German cars instead, it's not the Union's fault nor their perceived "hubris" by you, Ford fucked up and realized way too late that America made a sea change in their buying habits.

I see that defending the Union isn't in your interests. :eyes:

[asthmaticeog]

14. And there you go.

Assigning imaginary motives instead of defending your points with evidence.

You'll find few people on DU as pro-union as me. That doesn't mean I'll be blind to union mistakes. Many of the larger unions DID get hubristic in the '70s, that's partly how they were unable to see the Reagan smackdown coming. That's not some made-up MSM conventional wisdom, that's what in fact happened, and it's what allowed anti-union sentiments to take hold even among the strata of the population thet benefitted from bargaining units. I've been in organizing drives and gotten smacked down HARD. You should count your blessings if you're in one, it's hard to do today. We were a more prosperous nation when union membership was more common, and we would be again if union membership were more common.

And anyway, you're shifting the subject. You declared the Japanese "the enemy" because they're anti-union. All US corporations are anti-union, too. You haven't addressed that disconnect, just rolled your eyes and accused ME of being anti-union, which I'm not. You spoke as though a union would somehow prevent layoffs at Honda, when the same union Honda workers would presumably be members of couldn't do shit about layoffs at US car companies. Answer for these things before you attack me for being insufficiently doctrinaire.

[DainBramaged]

15. There is no disconnect

You must be talking to someone else?:silly: :silly: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[asthmaticeog]

16. So now I'm crazy?

If all you have are ad hominems and baseless assertions, stop wasting the time of people who want to have discussions.

[leftofcool]

2. Buy a Harley?

[rpannier]

4. Good to hear no one is apparantly losing their jobs

This is not something that can be attributed to outsourcing.

I live in Korea and I've been to Japan, several times.

Japan is friggin' expensive.

[DainBramaged]

8. "This move allows us to improve the competitiveness and appeal of our products "

Bullshit.


What it means is Harley continues to eat Honda's fucking lunch, and 44,000 motorcycles aren't enough to justify production here, so they ship the production back to Factory Japan and will quietly phase out the workers in spite of their assurances.


THERE IS NO UNION PROTECTION AT Honda.