Toyota Plant Target of NLRB Grievance

[Omaha Steve]

For my friend DainBramaged

http://www.wvmetronews.com/index.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=33417

11/07/2009

Buffalo

Toyota is the target of a grievance filed with the NLRB office in Cincinnati.

Some employees of Toyota's Buffalo plant filed the grievance Friday saying they were barred from distributing literature during break time to fellow employees. The literature was to generate discussion about union organization.

Toyota officials say they haven't seen the charges and can't comment, but confirm there's a policy against distribution of literature during work times and in work areas. Employees say their break areas have been strategically placed in spots considered work areas, effectively banning the practice at all in the plant.

The plant, which employs more than a thousand people making engines and transmissions, is a non-union shop.

[notadmblnd]

1. Why would toyota's employees want to organize?

The way some people talk around here, the foreign car companies are the best thing since sliced white bread.:sarcasm:

[divideandconquer]

2. Toyota leverages slave labor back in Japan to destroy union jobs here

"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."
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<http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3796/the_dark_side_of_the_toyota_prius/>

[madrchsod]

3. it`s a toss up between toyota and walmart

over how they treat their suppliers....