How car manufacturing in Mexico is taking on the world

Car manufacturing in mexico is booming, while Canada’s and Australia’s is dwindling. Amanda Lang from CBC finds out why.

Monterrey, the third-largest city in Mexico, is about an hour-and-a-half flight from Houston and it’s fast becoming a hub of global car manufacturing.

New Freightliner transport trucks roll out of there three at a time nowadays, made by Mexican shop floor workers who work for as little as one-fifth of what a Canadian made doing the same work.

The fact is, truck and car manufacturing in mexico is now producing twice as many vehicles as it did a decade ago, and the country has leapfrogged Canada in the process.

Companies are rushing to set up shop in part because of labour costs as much as 10 times less than those in Canada, but also because the country’s workforce is being trained to do more and more. Productivity at plants there is skyrocketing, which means higher profits for companies — even as wages march higher.

“On average in productivity we gain between six and eight per cent per year,” said Diba Iluna, who runs Canadian component maker Magna’s powertrain plant in Ramos, about 40km west of Monterrery. “Due to the attitude of the people, the flexibility of the people, they accept [trying] new things and we can do this… and then gain productivity.”

Read the full article here.