UAW Resource Center
107 Frazier Court
Georgetown, KY 40324

source

International Study: Toyota abuses workers at home and abroad
The Fall 2008 issue of
On the Line News
1. Auto woes hit home across the board
2. International Study: Toyota abuses workers
3. Union’s role in making work safe
4. Injured workers mistreated at profitable plants
5. Autoworkers bargain for jobs, wages in Europe and Japan
6. Q and A: The Employee Free Choice Act
7. True democracy in the workplace

Toyota has a reputation in the United States for providing good-paying jobs in many communities. That’s why it’s shocking to learn that a company that has so much staked on its reputation would risk it all by working its employees to death. But that’s just what Toyota is doing at its operations in Japan, according to a recent report by the National Labor Committee.

Charles Kernaghan, director of the workers’ rights group, traveled to Japan earlier this year and interviewed dozens of Toyota workers and their families about conditions at their plants as well as at Toyota’s supplier facilities in Japan. The committee members heard horrific stories strikingly similar to the kinds of human rights abuses uncovered in the worst sweatshops in China, Mexico, Indonesia and other developing nations.

They spoke at length with Hiroko Uchino, the widow of Toyota worker Kenichi Uchino. Kenichi collapsed and died while working at the Prius plant in Japan’s Toyota City. He was just 30 years old when he died. Kenichi routinely worked 14-hour shifts and up to 155 hours of overtime a month. Most of the overtime was unpaid because Toyota said those hours were “voluntary.” In reality, Toyota workers are pressured to work long hours off the clock, to take work home and to participate in frequent off-site meetings.

In addition to his young wife, Mr. Uchino left behind a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Breaking with a deeply rooted cultural taboo against talking about one’s employer or work-related problems, Ms. Uchino sued Toyota for her husband’s pension to support her children. The company fought her for six years before the Nagoya District Court ruled in her favor, finding that Mr. Uchino did, in fact, die from overwork. Toyota management never apologized to the family, never sent condolences and never issued a statement.

Uchino’s is not an isolated case. In fact, Japanese workers have a name for it - “Karoshi,” meaning overworked to death. The National Labor Committee report cites three other deaths caused by overwork and talked with a prominent Japanese attorney familiar with Karoshi cases who said the number of Toyota workers in Japan who fall ill, suffer serious depression and actually die from overwork is understated by at least 200 workers each year.

Toyota’s supply chain of horrors. Toyota relies on an extensive network of supplier plants for its parts. These subcontractor plants in Aichi Prefecture, home to Toyota and the country’s auto industry, employ hundreds of thousands of foreign guest workers trafficked from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Brazil.

Upon arriving in Japan, guest workers are stripped of their passports - one of the most serious human rights violations. They are prohibited from leaving the factory they are contracted to or changing their housing assignments. They work 15 or more hours a day, seven days a week, including mandatory overtime. According to Kernaghan, no one is paid anywhere near the overtime due them.

Workers are routinely at the factory 100 hours a week or longer. The work is relentless, exhausting and dangerous. Temps, and even full-time workers who are injured, are simply fired with no benefits. There are no paid holidays.

In addition to fulfilling the unending just-in-time demands of Toyota’s Japan facilities, the massive Toyota supplier network in Aichi makes parts bound for the United States, including Georgetown, Ky.

Driving the race to the bottom. Like their counterparts in Japan, workers at Toyota’s non-union plants in the U. S. also are paying a heavy physical price to keep their jobs. The UAW has documented more than 1, 800 cases of workers at the Georgetown, Ky., plant who simply disappeared after being injured on the job.

With Toyota now the world’s largest and most profitable automaker, the company is set on a course to lower wages and benefits at its U. S. operations. In April 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that Toyota executives said the company has “... stopped pegging its wages to UAW rates when it builds new plants. New hires will be paid no more than 50 percent above the prevailing manufacturing wage in the area where the plant is located.”

“Toyota is now the big player in this race to the bottom. And if Toyota wins, there won’t be much difference between being an autoworker in the U. S. and a worker sewing sneakers in China,” says Kernaghan. “Toyota must be held accountable... Workers can’t wait for someone else to come to their rescue. No one is coming. It’s up to the workers to change course and have a voice in company decisions that impact them.”