Word: smyrna
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...winner is Spring Hill, Tenn., a bucolic community of 1,400 located 28 miles south of Nashville and 563 miles away from the auto industry's epicenter in Detroit. The site is not as out of the way as it sounds. It is only about 30 miles from Smyrna, where Nissan builds cars and trucks, and some 30 miles from La Vergne, where Bridgestone makes tires. The success that these two Japanese companies have had in Tennessee reportedly impressed GM, as did the state's abundant electricity, favorable tax structure and productive labor force. Despite its fame as the home...
...companies. They also emphasized that the state has a pro-business government, no income tax on wages and salaries, and a hardworking labor force. Another selling point was that Nissan and Bridgestone have achieved unusually high productivity and quality in Tennessee. One Nissan study showed that trucks built at Smyrna had 11% fewer defects after being on the road for three months than models assembled in Japan...
...Ford plant in Dallas, where he climbed to the post of vice president before leaving in 1980 to become Japanese automaker Nissan's first employee in the U.S. As CEO of its American subsidiary, he built Nissan's first auto plant in the country, at a greenfield site in Smyrna, Tenn. In 1988 Runyon went on to chair the giant Tennessee Valley Authority, where he earned the moniker "Carvin' Marvin" for slashing the troubled utility's payroll by a third...
These advantages have been accruing since 1983, when the first transplant factories, built by Honda and Nissan, began producing sedans in Marysville, Ohio, and Smyrna, Tenn., respectively. But if the stakes were high then, they're even higher now. The Big Three's overall North American market share slipped to 61.7% last year, an all-time low, and it has declined an additional 1.6 points in the first quarter of 2003. Toyota is just a couple of market-share points from passing Chrysler, the smallest of the Big Three. Though it is narrowing the quality gap, Detroit today squeezes almost...
...manufacturers and a sense of mutual loyalty. "Nissan takes care of its employees, and if the union tries to organize us, I'll probably oppose it," says Murphy Wilson, 27, a newly hired technician in Canton. The UAW has tried four times to win over Nissan's Smyrna work force but was voted down 2 to 1 in its last try in 2001. "We have not given up on the transnationals," says UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, who claims that "fear, intimidation and threats hold workers back" from inviting unions into transplant factories. In 2001 some organizers publicly accused Nissan managers...