Toyota Motor Corp. said
it will move its U.S. sales headquarters from southern California to suburban
Dallas, delivering the latest blow to California in a fight for jobs with
arch-rival Texas, whose Governor Rick Perry has been actively poaching
businesses from the Golden State.
The
relocation from Torrance, a Los Angeles-area city of about 150,000, will bring
much of the Japanese automaker's U.S. operations under one roof in Plano,
Texas, including sales, service, marketing, advertising and
quality. Also moving to Texas will be some manufacturing staff now based in
Erlanger, Kentucky, and corporate operations staff based in New York City.
Toyota is
the largest employer in Torrance, accounting for more than 5 percent of all
jobs in the city with 3,837 workers in 2013, according to the city's annual
financial report. About 2,000 people from Toyota Motor Sales in Torrance will
be affected by the move, and about 4,000 U.S. employees in all, the company
said.
Toyota's
move, which will take place in stages between this summer and the end of 2016,
is the latest by a major employer to defect to the Lone Star State from
California. Toyota has been in California since 1957, when it set up shop at a
former Rambler dealership in Hollywood.
In February, Occidental
Petroleum Corp. said it would move from Los Angeles to Houston. In 2009,
power company Calpine Corp abandoned
San Jose for Houston and in 2006 engineering company
Fluor Corp. relocated to the Dallas area from Orange County.
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