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Tesla is happy to do things differently than other automakers, from the company-owned stores to the all-electric drivetrain. It also doesn't use union workers at its factory in Fremont, California (the former NUMMI plant, pictured). But now the United Auto Workers (UAW) is testing the waters for representation at the plant, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. UAW President Bob King has revealed that the UAW has created an organizing committee in Fremont. How this would change things at Tesla – and whether it would be a good or bad thing – is not really known, but...

In a deal expected to create hundreds of jobs, Tesla Motors announced today that it is teaming up with Toyota to build its all-electric Model S sedan at the recently shuttered NUMMI plant in Fremont. Under the agreement, Toyota will invest $50 million in Tesla, which will acquire the NUMMI plant and begin production of Teslas's Model S sedan in 2012. The deal is expected to create more than 1,000 new jobs The joint venture was unveiled by Tesla's CEO Elon Musk at a 5 p.m. news conference with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been eager to highlight job creation....

April 1 was certainly no fool's joke in Fremont, where the last car - a Corolla - rolled off the assembly line at the Nummi auto plant. It was the end of an era for a city that had built a local economy with the auto plant at the hub of the wheel. The automaker employed 4,700 workers, and related industries that provided services employed another 20,000 people. Nummi was the last auto plant operating in the state, and its shutdown closes another chapter in the life of the blue-collar worker, once a symbol of American middle-class life. Read more:...

FREMONT — NUMMI produced its last car at 9:40 a.m. today. The red Toyota Corolla rolled off the line, as hundreds of employees, dignitaries and company officials watched, according to workers and union leaders. The car is believed to be destined for a museum in Japan. "It's over," said Javier Contreras, an official with the United Auto Workers.

Employees at the NUMMI plant work on the last Toyota Tacoma truck to come... Employees at the NUMMI plant get a look the last Toyota Tacoma truck to... FREMONT, Calif. (AP) - The last car has rolled off the production lines at California's sole auto plant. Workers are trickling out of the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont as they complete their tasks and the plant readies to shut down. Nearby, job centers have been set up to help the newly unemployed figure out benefits, retraining and other options. The plant made Toyota Tacoma trucks and Corolla sedans. The...

New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. made its last Tacoma truck for Toyota Corp. on Friday, idling about 1,000 workers and moving the West Coast's only auto plant closer to its scheduled Thursday shutdown. Nummi opened in 1984 as a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota. After GM quit the partnership last summer, Toyota decided to close the plant. Next week, another 3,700 rank-and-file employees represented by the United Auto Workers Union will lose their jobs when Nummi builds its last Toyota Corolla. Departing Nummi workers will leave with severance packages from Toyota and aid from the federal Trade Adjustment...

As a gloomy, snowy February came to a close in the nation’s capital, so did the most recent circus attraction on Capitol Hill. Several days of congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls didn’t exactly deliver many more facts for Americans but they did leave behind a plethora of speculation and opinion to feast upon. While the saga now known as GasPedalGate flailed around quietly for several years, it’s suddenly taken center stage and today plays out like a bad made-for-TV-movie, complete with its villain, its victims, and most telling, a very long list of opportunists.

FREMONT (CBS 5 / BCN) ― California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said Wednesday that Toyota's plan to close the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont on April 1 would cost taxpayers an estimated $2.3 billion and cripple the state's economy. Lockyer said a report by a blue ribbon commission chaired by University of California at Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken "completely takes apart Toyota's excuses for closing the plant" and shows that the plant is financially viable and is needed to help Toyota meet its U.S. sales targets. Shaiken said closing the plant "would amount to abandonment of one of...

FREMONT -- Leaders of a United Auto Workers local answered questions from skeptical members Saturday about why it was taking so long to negotiate the final payments to the 4,700 people who will lose their jobs when New United Motor Manufacturing in Fremont shuts down April 1. The atmosphere in the packed union hall across from the Nummi plant was calm, in contrast to the anger that erupted into cursing and shoving Jan. 24. Rank-and-file members harangued leaders that day for conducting a campaign against Toyota over the impending closure while not going after General Motors, which jointly operated the...

DETROIT - Toyota's decision to close its 25-year-old California factory where UAW workers build Corolla cars and Tacoma pickups has delivered a seismic, Detroit-like jolt to the once-invincible Silicon Valley economy. The Japanese automaker's first plant closing in North America will add to California's swelling unemployment rolls, and perhaps, help the Golden State better empathize with the industry that it has persistently challenged with regulatory requirements. The closure also will eliminate Toyota's only UAW-represented workforce. ;California has now lost 580,000 manufacturing jobs - a quarter of its total - since 2001. NUMMI's closure next March could erase about 40,000 more....

Commerce: Toyota last week quietly announced it will shutter its famed NUMMI plant in Fremont, Calif. This should be taken as a warning: The facility had all the features of the green economy the White House wants.The White House likes some businesses better than others. In particular, it has pushed a battery of policies designed to favor the "right" sort of businesses. First, they should be green. They should be locally sourced. They should be high-tech and use trendy consultants. They should be organic. They should do lots of volunteering and "service" to the community. Above all, they should use...

Reporting from Los Angeles and Fremont, Calif. - Toyota Motor Corp.'s decision to abandon its assembly line in Fremont marks the end of large-scale auto manufacturing in California, which over the years boasted a dozen or more plants building vehicles ranging from Studebakers to Camaro muscle cars. The Japanese automaker said Thursday that it would end production at the plant March 31, throwing 4,700 people out of work, and return some production to Japan. It's another hard blow for California, a state already grappling with an 11.9% unemployment rate -- its highest since World War II and the fourth-worst in...

Toyota said today it plans to shut down the NUMMI plant because of high labor costs, associated with California’s high cost of living, and not because the UAW represents workers at the plant. “The UAW presence does not have a direct impact on the decision,” Executive Vice President Atsushi Niimi said in conference call today. “California is a high-cost location,” Niimi said.

FREMONT, Calif. — Toyota Motor Corp. officially confirmed Thursday that it will relocate production of the Tacoma pickup from a (unionized) plant in Northern California to its state-of-the-art (non-unionized) manufacturing facility in San Antonio by next summer. The announcement came hours after the Japanese automaker ended its relationship with a joint venture plant in the San Francisco Bay area as part of an effort to reduce excess production capacity at plants around the globe and return to profitability. As part of the plan to shift Tacoma production to San Antonio, Toyota will stop making vehicles at the New United Motor...

In a statement released today by the UAW, union President Ron Gettelfinger said, “It’s unfortunate the company chose to close a U.S. facility after benefiting so greatly from the federal cash-for-clunkers program, which is funded by U.S. taxpayers.”

Toyota Motor Corp. announced Thursday that it plans to end production in March 2010 at the Fremont, Calif., plant it has run with General Motors Co.

(8/27/2009) Toytoa announced today it will end production at Fremont, California’s New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., better known as NUMMI, in March 2010. Before today’s announcement, California lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have appealed to Toyota to save Nummi and its 4,600 jobs, a majority of which are represented by the United Auto Workers union. The NUMMI plant, established in 1984, employs 4,600 workers.

I attended a Congressman Pete Stark town hall meeting today (8/15/09). It was everything I thought it would be….and that ain’t good. I arrived well over an hour before the event and there was already a line. The people in front of me actually counted the numbers of people ahead of us and there were only 72. This is important because when I entered the hall I was given a number that might be “randomly” called. That number was not 72, it was 97. Since the hall only held a couple of hundred that raised some suspicions that the event...

The United Auto Workers and its union allies have quietly launched a campaign aimed at pressuring Toyota not to close the NUMMI plant in California now threatened by the break-up of a long-standing joint venture between the Japanese maker and General Motors. The e-mail-based campaign is urging supporters of the UAW to call their Congressmen and encourage them to keep the plant in Fremont, California open. The factory, originally a GM plant, has been running for a quarter century as part of an alliance between the two erstwhile competitors. Toyota originally saw the joint venture as a way to test...

Lawmakers reach out to Toyota Jul. 23, 2009 WASHINGTON -- Members of California's congressional delegation are asking Toyota Motor Corp., officials what they could possibly do to help keep an automotive plant open in Fremont that employs 4,500 people. Toyota has decided to liquidate its stake in the California manufacturing plant, which it jointly operated with General Motors, a Japanese news agency reported Thursday. The plant was established in 1984. In their letter to Toyota President Akio Toyoda, lawmakers say the plant has been a great asset to the state's work force as well as to the company. They say...