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

SOURCE National Labor Committee

Barbara Briggs of National Labor Committee, +1-212-242-3002,
bbriggs@nlcnet.or