—thats an interesting observation and seems accurate. Soon washing golf carts at the local country club will be a better employment option(w/the free golf of course) and may even require more “skill.”

BUT isn’t it mostly due to technology and automation replacing manual labor? It’s an “old world” job in a “new world” economy where gas almost everywhere is self-service and where self-checkout lines are becoming the norm at supermarkets. At my local grocery, there’s now more Self-Scan Lanes than regular ones! I figured out the trick for how they make it all work: they offer so few full-service lines that those few have such long lines that the self-check option becomes the better choice – ridiculous but it works

Toyota seeks Hispanic hires in Kentucky.

David Barkholz | | Automotive News / October 30, 2006

Toyota Motor Manufacturing is hiring Spanish-speaking workers and teaching them English to tap into a growing labor pool of Hispanics living near its assembly plant in Georgetown, Ky.

Toyota last month brought in the third group of trainees under the program, which began in July 2005.

About 20 trainees are studying English as a second language while learning production jobs and the Toyota Production System, said Toyota spokesman Rick Hesterberg. They earn a starting wage of $10 an hour.

Toyota is diversifying its work force to recognize ethnic minorities as a growing piece of the car-buying market in North America, Hesterberg said.

The trainees will spend about 75 percent of their time in the classroom over the six-month program.

The trainees can earn a raise to $13 an hour, then $14.50, as temporaries. The goal is to hire the trainees eventually as full-time Toyota employees.

The Georgetown plant employs 7,000 permanent workers and hundreds of temporaries, Hesterberg said. The plant makes the Camry, Camry Solara and Avalon.

During the first program, 18 of the 20 trainees graduated to production jobs at Toyota. Hesterberg said Toyota learned that it was easier to run the classes with people who started with the same proficiency in English.

The second class took mostly people with some English skills, while the third features temporaries with minimal English.

Sure Toyota does not have as many plants as say, GM. That ‘ll take some time.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061027/AUTO02/610270353/-1/ARCHIVE

Will the Gov of Michigan (Granholm or DeVos it doesn’t matter) be able to convince the UAW not to fight for inclusion and provide the proper tax incentives to get one of these plants built in Michigan? The employee skill level is there, the want for work is there, and no relos would be required. I just hope the Japanese wouldn’t be too scared off by the UAW… And if the UAW is out for the good of the worker and not the good of the executive board and the local leadership councils, they’d be sprinting to Japan today to push for one of these facilities.

If I was Wagoner, LaSorda or Mullaly, I’d be begging for these guys to come into town. It would provide benchmark for a union-centric state to have an automotive manufacturing plant in the state that in non-union and help push their own factories away from the mothership and also get the workers that Ford and GM have furloughed/laid off (the bought out guys are off the books as of 2009) off of their payrolls and onto someone elses.

This will also better define market prices for labor in the state.

If either Granholm or DeVos could pull this off, they’d be the Governor for as long as they wanted to be…