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Public D
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U.S. workers are supposed to compete with this?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3796/the_dark_side_of_the_toyota_prius/
The Dark Side of the Toyota Prius
By Paul Abowd
A new report alleges that Toyota, the world's largest auto company, is violating workers' rights at Prius hybrid plants in Japan.
The National Labor Committee (NLC), a New York-based human rights group, has been investigating working conditions at Toyota Motor Corp., and the labor used to produce its best-selling Prius hybrid cars.
In its 65-page report released in June, NLC includes first-hand testimony of factory conditions in “Toyota City,” outside of Nagoya, Japan — less than 200 miles southwest of Tokyo — where the largest auto company in the world employs some 70,000 people.
The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers are “stripped of their passports and often forced to work — including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota — 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.” Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.
Low-wage temporary workers make up one-third of Toyota’s Prius assembly-line workers, mostly in the auto-parts supply chain. They are signed to contracts for periods as short as four months, and are paid only 60 percent of a full-time employee’s wage.
Parts plants run by subcontractors advertise standard, nine-hour, five-day-a-week jobs. But according to the NLC, “the typical shift was 15 to 16.5 hours a day, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. or 1:00 a.m.”
In 2002, Kenichi Uchino, 30, died while working at the “green” Tsutsumi plant that assembles the Prius. During the 13th hour of a routine 14-hour day, Uchino collapsed on the shop floor of the internationally lauded “sustainable” factory, which uses sulfur-oxide-eating paint and boasts 5 percent emissions reductions. A Japanese court ruled that Uchino’s death was caused by exhaustion from overwork.
His wife, Hiroko Uchino, described a grueling lifestyle that included an 85-hour workweek prior to his death. The NLC published his time cards, which reveal that he was “putting in 106.5 to 155 hours of overtime … in the 30 days leading up to his death.”
Much of this overtime went unpaid. (Toyota explained Kenichi’s extra hours as “voluntary quality control activities,” says the report.) But in court, his survivors were able to win pension payments.
The NLC also alleges that Toyota — through its subsidiary Toyota Tsusho — has joint business ventures with Burma’s military regime. The charges arise from an agreement between Tsusho, Suzuki and the junta to set up parts and material plants in Burma, and produce vehicles for the military government. These ties remain despite a 2001 declaration from the company that it ended contracts with the Burmese government.
In the wake of the report, the company wrote a letter to stockholders: “Toyota has carefully considered the current environment in Burma, has conveyed to Toyota Tsusho Corporation its concerns about that environment, and has asked Toyota Tsusho to reconsider its business activities in the country.” As the largest owner of Tsusho’s stock (more than a third), Toyota itself has a role to play in cutting these ties.
The NLC report also connects the company’s overseas misdeeds to the American economy. Millions of dollars in car parts shipped by Toyota Tsusho are received by Tsusho America, which distributes them to Toyota assembly plants in the American South. This influx of foreign auto infrastructure uses an overwhelming ratio of non-union labor, fueling the diminution of union density in the auto sector.
What’s more, a memo leaked from Toyota’s Georgetown, Ky., plant to the New York Times in late 2007, exposed “management’s plans to cut $300 million in labor costs across Toyota’s North American operations over the next three years.” To do this, Toyota plans to introduce tiered wage scales and reduced health benefits for U.S. Toyota workers, which should come as little surprise to an American auto workforce that has suffered similar attacks from Detroit’s Big Three manufacturers for the past three decades.
As NLC Director Charles Kernaghan says, if Hollywood celebrities — such as actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz — can popularize green driving, they can also help end Toyota’s sweatshop labor regime and its ties to Burma’s dictatorship.
Says Kernaghan: “We hope that these same celebrities will now also challenge Toyota to improve its respect for human and worker rights.”
Paul Abowd lives in Detroit, where he writes for Labor Notes. His work has appeared in Z Magazine, Monthly Review WebZine, and The Electronic Intifada.
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http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 1:51 pm |
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Adam Ford
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Japan should care about their own workers. I'm sure our American Prius workers will have ample OSHA protections.
http://current.com/items/89092719_toyota_will_now_build_the_prius_in_america
DETROIT — Toyota acknowledged Thursday that, like its rival automakers in Detroit, it misjudged the drastic swing in the American market away from larger vehicles.
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With sales of pickups and big S.U.V.’s tumbling, Toyota said it would shut down truck production at two United States plants for three months and consolidate its pickups into one factory next year.
The Japanese automaker also said it would begin making its Prius gas-electric hybrids in a new plant in Mississippi by late 2010 to meet demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“It shows that Toyota is just as fallible as anybody else,” said Joseph Phillippi, a principal of AutoTrends Consulting. “They’re human after all.”
While overall vehicle sales have dropped 10 percent this year, sales of large pickups are down about 25 percent through June, and S.U.V. sales have fallen over 30 percent, according to data compiled by Ward’s Automotive Group.
The shift has hit Detroit’s Big Three much harder. General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler have responded by idling truck plants across North America and temporarily laying off tens of thousands of workers.
But Toyota’s announcement that it will suspend truck production at plants in Texas and Indiana was an unwelcome first for the Japanese company. |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:16 pm |
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Demeralda
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| I was once published in IN These Times... can't believe they're still around. They paid me what seemed like a fortune at the time, but the biggest deal was that it was a two part look at the relationship between corporations and workers, with mine as part 1 and NOAM CHOMSKY as part 2. Huzzah! Those were the good old days, before I became jaded AND a lousy writer... |
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I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing. - Mae West |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:20 pm |
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andi03
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****Those were the good old days, before I became jaded AND a lousy writer****
Dem, yur thee beast postur wee hav hear for ay gole too emyoulate fore thee Englush layngwage. |
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Build a bridge and get over it! |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:25 pm |
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Demeralda
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Awww dat's so swweeeet!
Womyn rool! |
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I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing. - Mae West |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:35 pm |
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andi03
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Don't let word spread that I am sweet...I am supposed to maintain the aura of........b*tch, eh? 
Womyn rool......boyz drool....<evil grin> |
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Build a bridge and get over it! |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:39 pm |
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Public D
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Adam, why should OUR COUNTRY allow parts made in Japan (or Burma or China, etc.) under these kinds of inhumane conditions into our country to be assembled or sold? Seriously. I want to hear the rationale.
Why shouldn't our trade agreements match our ideals? We could level the playing field, allowing quality, productivity, and safety determine the value of a workforce – not merely who can work fastest and cheapest, until they literally die of exhaustion. This would lift the third world up, and give U.S. workers a chance to complete on skill, craftsmanship, efficiency, innovation. Inspire our workforce to be the best it can be – not beat them down mentally and physically in an effort to make their livelihood (and lives) seem more and more worthless. Would you consider an employer who operated that way a good boss? A good business man? Bound for long-term success? Of course not. Tougher, fairer, more humane trade deals can be a boon for the entire world! That is the kind of leadership regular folks all over the planet are looking for from the U.S. Might even do more to prevent terrorism than, say, an East Berlin-like Iron Curtain along the Rio Grande.
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Dem, that is awesome! Noam had a tough act to follow. We would love to read it! Please post! |
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http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:23 pm |
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Adam Ford
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First we should make our country more competitive. We should balance our budget and not with some more Enron style accounting. We should then reduce our taxes on businesses and individuals. Even if other countries want to abuse their workers I think we could still compete with them. If unfair labor practices are too much than we may need tarriffs.
We do need to be able to compete on a global level. Right now we are not as competitive as we should be and we will pay a severe price. I think America's policies are more of a threat to America than cheap parts and goods coming in. |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 8:00 pm |
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Public D
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That's your best blah blah bullshit yet, Adam. "If people are being killed to sell us cheap shit, just charge them higher tariffs?" How much does it cost to kill your father for a shiny piston? vulgar language competing on a global level. Let's compete on a human level. Put that in your politically expedient abortion rhetoric and contradict it, hypocrite psycho. Better yet, throw a bitchy fit about the service taxes associated with burying your father's unproductive corpse, right?
You can't do proper math if you only value certain digits, Congressman Ford. 3 minus 2 = 0 because you're number 1, right? |
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http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 11:33 pm |
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Adam Ford
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| People are being killed right here in Flint Michigan. We should fix the problems here in Flint, Genesee County, Michigan and the United States before worrying about other country's problems. You're right about the abortion issue. We can't even save babies here in America yet we're worried about low paid foreign workers? It's nice you still have faith in our elected officials to solve the worlds problems but not police the world. I don't trust them to guard our own country's borders or solve our own problems let alone police the world and solve the world's problems. |
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 8:35 am |
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Public D
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| Which is it, Adam? Flat-World Globalization or not? Don't you pay attention in Dr. Perry's class? We help people here by demanding equality everywhere. Framing this as a 'policing the planet' issue is just plain ignorant and irresponsible. Same with your small government fetish. Trade deals are real, functioning instruments with a lot of power - whether crafted by one part-time government volunteer working out of his shack in Montana (your dream 'government') or an army of Washington bureaucrats. What's important is that he (or they) craft them in the interest of all citizens – not Walmart's stock price. |
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http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 8:51 am |
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Adam Ford
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We demand equality where we want to demand equality. I'm sure we're working real hard for women's equality in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps we could stop bringing oil into our country so we can all walk to work in support of womens rights. http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Saudi-Arabia
If I remember right Americans were a little upset when those discriminatory Arab countries "helped us" to stop buying their oil in the 70s.
We have problems with racism and discrimination, poverty, violence etc in our own country. If we can't solve our own problems how can we solve the world's??? Our Washington beaurocrats can't even do their own job and follow our own constitution let alone handle the world. In addition it could be argued that our whole system of justice if filled with injustice. If you want to look for serious problems and human rights issues you don't have to look at other coutnries to find plenty of problems that need solving. |
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:00 am |
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Demeralda
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Okay Adam, but you can't abandon your ideals depending on which country it is.
Either workers are entitled to fair wages and working conditions, or they aren't. Furthermore, those are non-parallel (unfair labor vs. saving women in Saudi Arabia) -- in one case, our manufacturers are forced to comply with certain conditions and those in other countries are not. This puts an unfair burden on us (adds extra cost, etc.). In the other case, there's no comparison to be made.
There are places we CAN'T go with our philosophies -- of course we're not helping women in Saudi Arabia, because we have no mechanism by which to change them. Boycott? Boycott what? By force? Of course not.
So we choose the battles that we CAN fight, where we CAN make a difference. You can't just scrub your morality because it's logistically impossible. |
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I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing. - Mae West |
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:07 am |
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Adam Ford
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:50 am |
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Mellow D
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Good grief. Must we solve everything at once in order to discuss anything?
The topic was about labor practices and the relation ship to fair trade (there is a difference between free trade and fair trade, and I'm not looking it up for you this time, because you clearly can't think past your nose).
Why you think we should solve the farm subsidies bit before we can complain about the labor practices used to produce the cars we drive is beyond me.
In the meantime, I totally agree with you that the current farm subsidies structure is creating horrible problems here and abroad.
I get the feeling that you aren't trying to be difficult. You're trying to be impossible. |
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:20 am |
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