Category Archives: NUMMI

City of Fremont Starts a Poll on What to do with NUMMI

By Development, Jobs, NUMMI

The City of Fremont has recently started a poll on what should be done with the NUMMI property.  It can be found here.

Before asking a single question the survey takes you through four pages of explanatory text.  One of the lines that caught me here is “create new jobs as quickly as possible”.  This may sound appealing but it implies that we might want to settle for poorer-quality jobs as opposed to waiting for better opportunities.  While the loss of NUMMI’s jobs are significant, we should strive for living-wage jobs as opposed to just getting jobs quickly.

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Suggestion to Manufacture High-Speed Rail Cars in Fremont

By 2 commentsJobs, NUMMI, Transportation

Last December, Quentin Kopp floated the idea of the NUMMI plant being re-purposed as a manufacturing facility for high-speed rail cars.  I think this is an excellent idea, the kind of idea that our City should be pursuing.  Yet the City was silent when this idea was raised.

I have vigorously argued that we need to maintain this area a job-producing site, specifically middle-class living-wage jobs as was provided by the NUMMI facility.  Between housing, retail and jobs, the latter is the most important item that we need to turn our City’s economy around.

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Manufacturing Jobs Vital for the Middle Class

By Jobs, NUMMI

In a recent Business Week article Vice President Joe Biden pointed out how that manufacturing jobs are essential to support a vibrant middle class. I wholeheartedly agree with this. That’s one reason why I believe that we should keep the NUMMI site for manufacturing.

There was a recent post on the Tri-City Beat about how the NUMMI site is a developer’s dream site. The obvious question to ask from this is should the City of Fremont do what is best for the developers or what is best for the city at large? I believe that we should preserve this site for manufacturing jobs, even if it will take a while to provide anything close to the number of jobs that NUMMI provided.

Study of NUMMI Suppliers at the AC Workforce Investment Board

By Jobs, NUMMI

I attended the meeting of the Alameda County Workforce Investment Board last Thursday. There was a presentation by a company called Manex, which analyzed the viability of businesses that rely heavily on NUMMI for their business.  Of course, many of these are in jeopardy of going out of business once NUMMI stops operating.

Manex looked at thirteen different companies with a total of over 1,200 employees.  It was estimated that 1,050 of these jobs would be lost due to NUMMI’s closure.  The purpose of their study was to develop strategies whereby these companies could adapt to the closure of NUMMI and find new customers that could keep their businesses going, keeping some or all of the jobs that they currently provide.

What this showed me is that there are plenty of other potential markets for the companies that may have thought of themselves as nothing but NUMMI suppliers.  For example, those companies that make injected molded plastics could make products for the semiconductor industry, solar companies, medical equipment and other industries.  There is a wide variety of manufacturing facilities in the bay area that need suppliers.

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