NUMMI: this american life

[jeffro01]

Depends on the union and the CBA that they've negotiated. Teachers unions are notoriously good at protecting their own, regardless of how bad of a teacher they may be. The UAW has a similar reputation, but again, they can only do what their CBA allows them to do. Some are much more slanted towards management and others much more towards the employees.

My wife deals with unions all the time as part of her role at the company she works for and her experience tells her the same thing, to fire a union member you need an act of god, and act of congress simply won't be enough...

Wanna know why employers don't like unions?...

Jeff

 

[tdelta1000]

Interesting story. As for TM and NUMMI, the story begins off light years ahead of where GM left off.

 

[tander]

NUMMI | This American Life


interesting story on 'this American life' about the NUMMI plant. has the history of the collaboration between toyota and GM.

Thanks for posting that. It would be cool if they did an update story and talked about what has or hasn't changed since Tesla.

 

[cwerdna]

Thanks for posting that. It would be cool if they did an update story and talked about what has or hasn't changed since Tesla.

FWIW, Tesla only uses a fraction of the former NUMMI plant, and its current output is also a fraction.

I've been on a tour of NUMMI when it was still NUMMI and can safely say it doesn't looks like what I see in documentaries, pictures and videos of the Tesla plant. Tesla's clearly given the interior a makeover and the equipment (e.g. robots) weren't red when under NUMMI.

 

[arnolddeleon]

I've been lucky enough enough to get a tour of the factory both as NUMMI and Tesla (twice). The tours start at the same spot with very similar if not identical trams. One of the big differences is the lighting, particularly now, with Tesla it is so much brighter.

Another big difference is that Tesla manufactures a dramatically larger percentage of components on site so the number of cars that can be produced will be smaller than when it was NUMMI (which was largely an assembly plant). So measuring output by number of cars will be misleading. I saw an article,which I can't find at moment, that claims that the Tesla now has more people working at the Fremont factory than NUMMI. Data to support this is includes the now very full parking lot. Additional evidence of this include suppliers that were literally brought in house (Futuris?) now have their own space outside the Fremont factory. Tesla has almost moved some of its own work into new space in Lathrop.

arnold

 

[Cestevenson]

I've listened to the original story and need to go back again. Like an above poster, our Tesla is the second vehicle from the facility. Unlike that poster, we had an awesome experience with our 1988 Chevy Nova. The dealer was the best, actually only, dealer experience we ever had. One of the pickup traditions they had was to take a photo of the family with their new vehicle and then made a complementary calendar. That was early in the NUMMI plant history and that car was a fun little car. We knew people who worked there and they were very positive about it.

Fast forward 25 years and we had our delivery specialist take the same photo. That is an interesting contrast.