Toyota Bosses Ignore Safety Concerns

Six Toyota manufacturing employees are now claiming that they wrote a memo to the company executives in 2006 regarding the employees' concerns about vehicle safety issues.

"We are concerned about the processes which are essential for producing safe cars, but that ultimately may be ignored, with production continued in the name of competition," the memo from the concerned workers stated.

In the five years leading up to the 2006 memo, Toyota recalled over 5 million cars worldwide. This lead to many people within the company to become concerned, especially since Toyota had cut overhead while increasing output at the same time.

The Toyota executives simply ignored the memo and the concerns of their workers.

"They completely ignored us," said 62-year-old assembly line worker Tadao Wakatsuki. "That's the Toyota way."

"We used to test every one of our cars for safety and quality," Watasuki, founder of the All Toyota Labor Union, said to the press. "Now we do maybe 60%. The old 100% is a thing of the past."

The Union founder also had this to say:

"Our responsibility as a labor union was to point out these problems that Toyota should have known about. People were overworked; some were committing suicide... Of course, Toyota did nothing, but looking back we see how important this was. We just told them what we saw."

If capitalism and competition are so great at making products of good quality, then why is Toyota intentionally lowering its quality? If capitalism treats workers so well, then why are there reports of Toyota workers committing suicide? I think it is fair to say that the capitalists have lied to us.

Karl Marx said that competition only makes it harder for a company to make a profit from selling its products. So they must cut back on costs (usually labor and quality costs) in order to increase profit by saving money. Toyota is cutting back on safety testing and its relationship with its workers in its drive for greater profits. This will only result in Toyota's destruction, unless they are bailed out by their friends in some government (who will use taxpayers' money, unfortunately).