The big three will continue to shrink in size, eventually employing fewer and fewer workers. They're dead meat. Toyota on the other hand having responded to labor market forces will continue to thrive and offer more workers future employment.
BTW, I currently own two GM cars and two Toyota (Lexus) automobiles. Is there any comparison in quality or reliability. None! You can guess which product has treated us better?
BTW, GM employed about 225,000 US workers in in 2026. That number has fallen to about 165,000. Toyota employs 136,000 in the US. That number is growing.
Toyota Gives 9% Pay Bump to Most U.S. Auto-Factory Workers, Following UAW Gains in Detroit
Assembly-line workers at Toyota’s U.S. factories to earn about $34 an hour and reach top pay in half the time
By Sean McLain, WSJ
Updated Nov. 1, 2023 5:23 pm ET
Toyota, whose U.S. factories aren’t unionized, will increase pay for most assembly plant workers starting Jan 1.
That didn’t take long.
Toyota Motor TM 6.05%increase; green up pointing triangle is giving most of its U.S. auto-factory workers a 9% pay bump and shortening the time it takes to reach the maximum pay, a sign that gains the United Auto Workers made in Detroit are rippling through the auto industry.
Toyota, whose U.S. factories aren’t unionized, will increase pay for most assembly plant workers from $31.86 an hour to $34.80 an hour, starting Jan 1., a spokesman for the company said Wednesday.
Hourly employees at Toyota’s spare-parts facilities and logistics warehouses will also receive the same pay raise, the Japanese automaker’s third increase this year for blue-collar workers.
Toyota typically reviews wages for workers twice a year, in the spring and the fall, to determine whether increases are needed. In September, it increased the hourly wage by 25 cents for this same group of workers.
The company is also cutting in half the time it takes for hourly employees to reach maximum pay, from eight years to four, the spokesman confirmed. The UAW had won a similar gain for its union-represented members in tentative agreements struck recently at General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler-parent Stellantis.
The United Auto Workers union said it reached a tentative deal with General Motors after more than six weeks after workers went on strike. The company is the last of the three Detroit automakers to reach a new tentative labor deal. Photo: Rebecca Cook/Reuters
Toyota regularly assesses compensation “to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry,” said Chris Reynolds, the company’s head of human resources in North America.
Automotive News and Reuters previously reported the hourly-worker pay increases at Toyota.
The UAW recently concluded a more-than-six-week strike at the Detroit automakers, after reaching proposed contracts at all three car companies for roughly 146,000 U.S. auto workers.
Those agreements include a 25% general wage increase over four years, which the UAW says is more than members have received in the past 22 years combined. When cost-of-living adjustments are factored in, the increase would boost the top pay for Detroit Three production workers to about $42 an hour at the end of the contract’s term in 2028.
UAW President Shawn Fain has promoted the wins in Detroit as providing momentum to a union that is looking to expand its membership more broadly in the auto industry, a goal that has been elusive in the past.
He has signaled that the UAW’s next targets are U.S. factories at Toyota, Tesla and foreign-owned automakers that currently don’t have union-represented workers in the U.S.
“When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six,” Fain said on Sunday night.
Executives at the foreign car companies have closely monitored union negotiations in Detroit during the strike, concerned it might eventually impact their business in a tight labor market.
Foreign-based automakers have long spent less on labor costs for their nonunionized hourly workers, a gap that auto executives in Detroit have highlighted as putting their operations at a competitive disadvantage.
Still, companies like Toyota and Hyundai say they pay above market rates in the regions where their factories are located.
Last year, the average production-worker wage at a foreign-owned auto plant was about $24.70 an hour, about on par with the broader auto industry, according to a study by EY for Autos Drive America, a trade group representing Hyundai, BMW and other transplant automakers.
Historically, the Detroit Three have tried to match the lower U.S. manufacturing costs of their foreign rivals, whose factories are largely collected in right-to-work states in the U.S. South.
As a result, labor costs for the American automakers fell during the 2007-2009 financial crisis and remained lower than where they were in the mid-2000s.
At the same time, those same costs for the nonunion car companies have crept up in the past decade, said Marick Masters, a labor historian at Wayne State University, who has written a book about the history of the UAW.
The ultimate goal of the UAW is to reverse the trend where the transplants were setting the industry standard and go back to where it was in the past, when the union set the bar, he said.
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