Toyota Linked to Human Trafficking and Sweatshop Abuses

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>>> PR Newswire for Journalists <push_s...@prnewswire.com> 6/18/2008 7:04 AM

>>> 

Toyota Linked to Human Trafficking and Sweatshop Abuses

 

Toyota May Be a Shade Greener Environmentally but has badly stumbled with Human

Rights Abuses

 

NEW YORK, June 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the National Labor Committee

(NLC) is releasing a 65-page report, "The Toyota You Don't Know" documenting

serious human rights violations by the Toyota Motor Company, which will disturb

most Americans.

 

"Celebrities like Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pit, Bill Maher and

others have led the way in turning Toyota's Prius into a symbol of concern for

our environment," said Charles Kernaghan, director of the NLC, "We hope that

these same celebrities will now also challenge Toyota to improve its respect for

human and worker rights.  As a start, Toyota should cut its ties to the Burmese

dictators and end the exploitation of foreign guest workers trafficked to

Japan."

 

* Toyota linked to human trafficking and sweatshop abuse: Toyota's much admired

"Just in Time" auto parts supply chain is riddled with sweatshop abuse,

including the trafficking of foreign guest workers, mostly from China and

Vietnam to Japan, who 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.  Guest

workers who complain about abusive conditions are deported.

 

* Prius made by low-wage temps: Fully one-third--10,000--of all Toyota assembly

line workers in Japan are low-wage temps who have few rights and earn less than

60% of what full time workers do.

 

* Unpaid overtime and "overworked" to death: Mr. Kenichi Uchino was just 30

years old when he died of overwork on an assembly line at Toyota's Prius plant,

leaving behind his young wife and two children.  Mr. Uchino routinely worked 13

to 14 hours a day, putting in 106 1/2 to 155 hours of overtime--depending on

whether work taken home was counted--in the 30 days leading up to his death. 

Toyota claimed that he had only worked 45 hours of overtime and that the other

61 1/2 to 110 hours were "voluntary" and unpaid.  His wife had to go to court --

which ruled that Mr. Uchino was overworked to death -- to win a pension for

their children.

 

* Ties to Burmese dictators: Toyota, through the Toyota Tsusho Corporation,

which is part of the Toyota Group of Companies, is involved in several joint

business ventures with the ruthless military regime in Burma.  The dictators use

these revenues to repress and torture the people of Burma.

 

* Toyota and the race to the bottom:  Toyota is imposing its two-tier, low wage

model at its non-union plants in the south of the United States, which will

result in wages and benefits being slashed across the entire auto industry.

 

The National Labor Committee recently documented how the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade

Agreement descended into human trafficking with tens of thousands of foreign

guest workers held under conditions of involuntary servitude.

 

Access report at: http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=562

 

First Call Analyst:

FCMN Contact: 

 

 

Source: National Labor Committee

   

 

CONTACT:  Barbara Briggs of National Labor Committee, +1-212-242-3002,

bbr...@nlcnet.or

 

Web Site:  http://www.nlcnet.org/

 

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