Word: plante
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...unlikely stop for sightseers, but there they were: two carloads of serious-minded, dark-suited Japanese in a deserted parking lot in Chattanooga, Tenn. Each carrying a packed briefcase, the visitors gazed long and intently at the object of their interest: a rusted, run-down manufacturing plant as big as five football fields. The plant was obsolete and abandoned, but the Japanese were delighted by their discovery. Taking pains to conceal their satisfaction, they peered into the distance and busily scribbled in their notebooks. Later, after several trips back, they bought the forlorn plant. Today, after a $27 million investment...
...actually wanted. After a tour of the 1940s-era structure that eventually housed their heavy-equipment concern, the Japanese pronounced it "very dull and scary, very gloomy," recalls John Gregory, a Tennessee official who escorted the group. When the Komatsu executives suddenly announced that they were buying the abandoned plant, says Gregory, "it kind of threw us for a loop...
What is it like to work in a U.S. factory that has been taken over by the Japanese? It has been more than four years since the Firestone Tire & Rubber plant in LaVergne, Tenn., was bought outright for $52 million by Bridgestone of Tokyo, Japan's No. 1 tiremaker. Some obvious things have not changed in that time: workers still labor over tire presses, for example, and steel- belted radials still roll off the line. But in any number of subtle and not so subtle ways, the influence of the new owners can be felt throughout the factory and indeed...
...Hollywood film about Japanese-American factory relations. The movie depicts the Japanese takeover of a mythical Pennsylvania company town as a comic clash between a lackadaisical work force and transplanted managers obsessed with efficiency. Although Bridgestone and LaVergne officials play down the comparison, workers at the Japanese-owned tire plant have another perspective. Says Roger Sherrill, a longtime tire assembler at Firestone who was on hand when the Japanese arrived: "That movie hit it right on the head...
Worker-management frictions began even before Bridgestone (the name comes from the surname of the company's founder, which translates as "stone bridge" in Japanese) took over the factory in January 1983. During preliminary negotiations with United Rubber Workers Local 1055, the plant union, an angry blue-collar leader became abusive, brought up Pearl Harbor and asked the Japanese present to get out of the bargaining room. To his amazement, they did, flying all the way back to Japan. A deal governing labor relations was struck only after the union wrote an apology and formally asked Bridgestone to come back...