Petitioners to Toyota:
respond to workers’ concerns

Thousands of petition signatures were delivered to Toyota Motor Manufacturing officials in Georgetown, Ky., in December 2007, as signers urged the company to solve the problems outlined by the Workers’ Rights Board in August. The petitions were met with silence from Toyota.

“We don’t understand the actions of Toyota, says Bill
Londrigan, president of the
Kentucky AFL-CIO. “These letters, petitions and postcards come from people all around the country asking for simple
fairness for the workers...who help the company make enormous profits, year after year.”

The petition signature gathering was prompted by an earlier attempt by workers to talk with Toyota management about their concerns. Again, Toyota officials refused to meet with them.On Aug. 28 representatives of the Workers’ Rights Board (WRB) requested a meeting with managers of the Toyota plant in Georgetown to make recommendations for improving working conditions and addressing other issues of concern to Toyota workers.

But company executives wouldn’t meet with the group. Instead, they responded with a three-page letter, defending Toyota’s Georgetown plant as a “great place to work.” They also rebutted each of the group’s
recommendations (see below).

Tell it like it is. The recommendations from the board stemmed from June 10 public hearing organized by Kentucky Jobs with Justice (JwJ). Kentucky JwJ is one of 40 labor-community-religious coalitions across the United States. Founded in 1987, its purpose is to win justice in workplaces and communities where working families live.

More than 200 Toyota workers, family members, friends, community and faith leaders, and elected officials attended the hearing, which also drew considerable local media attention. Board members included Cynthia Cain of Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington, Ky., John Fisher, Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, state representatives Jim Glenn and Reginald Meeks, employment attorney Tony Oppegard and Father John Rausch, Coordinator for Peace and Justice, Catholic Diocese.

Current and former Toyota workers told the board about the unfair treatment of temporary workers at the Georgetown plant who are hired at $13 an hour with little or no benefits. The base rate for production workers, effective Oct. 1, is $25.98. The majority of temporaries are never offered permanent jobs.

Two workers who testified were Manuel Eades and Noel Riddell. They were fired for showing co-workers a company memo they saw on a public computer drive at work that outlined Toyota’s plans to reduce labor costs at its North American facilities. “Knowledge was my crime,” Riddell told the WRB panel.

Cornelia James, an 18-year Toyota worker, told the panel about injured workers who just “disappear.”

“We have a right to know how many workers are injured, what type of injuries they suffered and what happens to our injured co-workers. Hiding this information is wrong,” she said.

Despite Toyota’s defense of its workplace practices, Rausch said Toyota workers can – and will – have a voice in determining the future of their workplace.

“We must build a base of moral power in this country because the people do not have economic power. Until we build this moral base, workers will continue to lose ground and the greedy will rule,” he said. “We must slowly rebuild justice in society.”
In a Sept. 6, 2007, letter to Jobs with Justice, Toyota
disputed or failed to fully
rectify the problems outlined in the board’s findings, glossing over many of the suggestions.

For example, to the OSHA-supported fact that nearly 2,000 workers are injured at Toyota each year, and from those same injuries nearly 400 have disappeared,
Toyota writes, “The numbers stated in JwJ’s report grossly exaggerate the number of injuries at TMMK and the number of team members unable to return to work due to workplace injuries.” But the letter never states what the supposed true numbers are.
To the board’s recommendation that Toyota pay temporary workers full wages and benefits, Toyota can only say “Temporaries working at TMMK start at a rate of $13 per hour with the opportunity to progress to $15 per hour…” That’s still just over half the $25.98 hourly base rate for production workers.

Toyota’s letter did not address the cases of Manuel Eades, Noel Riddell and Rachel Hogue.

The board’s Aug. 28 recommendations come from lengthy, careful deliberations made by some of the most well-respected members of the community in which Toyota operates in
Georgetown. Why Toyota doesn’t take them seriously is baffling, considering they conclude their letter by stating, “This partnership between state and local leaders and Toyota has turned out to be a model for all other states.”

Toyota officials may have refused to meet with the petitioners. But Father Rausch says the cause for Toyota workers will not be stopped.

“Toyota refused to see us,” says Rausch, “but there is no doubt they heard us. And there is no doubt that in the long run, workers inside TMMK will also be heard, because the voice of workers is a vital part of American democracy.”

Wrongfully terminated Toyota worker Noel Riddell describes his experiences at Toyota before the Kentucky Workers Rights Board.

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE
KENTUCKY WORKERS RIGHTS BOARD

• Temporary workers: We call on the management of Toyota to ensure fair treatment of temporary workers. We call on Toyota to hire temporary workers with full benefits and wages after workers complete a 90-day probationary period.

• Terminated workers: We call on the management of Toyota to reinstate
Manual Eades and Noel Riddell. Both Eades and Riddell deserve all back pay, benefits and seniority restored. In addition, their records should be wiped clean. We call on management of Toyota to return Rachel Hogue to a job free from a hostile work environment. We call on management of Toyota to dissolve the current peer review process, which includes equal members of management and employees. We call on management to establish a genuine peer review process made up only of workers who are selected by their peers. The recommendations from this new process should be respected and followed by management. We call on management to forfeit their veto power, and instead use an independent arbitrator suggested by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services. Furthermore,
workers must have access to all of the same information as the company prior to the peer review hearing.

• Workplace safety: We call on the management of Toyota to create a health and safety committee that is elected by workers and trained independently. Due to the fact that the Early Symptom Investigation Team does not have medically-trained personnel, it must be eliminated. Injury claims should not be used in the formula for calculating bonus hours, as this system discourages workers from reporting hazardous conditions and injuries. We call on management of Toyota to treat injured workers fairly and with dignity and respect. Injured workers should be encouraged to fully recover from their injuries without repercussions. Workers returning from medical leave should be given suitable job placements. Finally, we call on management of Toyota to provide adequate restroom facilities for its women workers.