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Toyota shut down (almost?) all domestic production facilities yesterday

January 18, 2009
By Ken Worsley


Several reports on Toyota hit the media today, and we’ll just take a quick look at two of them. First, the Nikkei is reporting that Toyota shut down all twelve of its domestic production facilities yesterday, and intends to close them again twice more in January. This will be followed by 11 days of closure over February and March.

The Japan Times published a Kyodo report stating that Toyota had closed 11 of 12 production facilities yesterday, in an attempt to bring new vehicle production down to about half of last year’s level. According to Kyodo, production cuts will reduce Toyota’s output to 11,000 units per day, which is the effective borderline for profitability.

In addition, Toyota has announced plans to suspend production at all seven of its North American factories for up to 30 days from January to March.

Filed Under Automotive, Business 

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Comments

6 Responses to “Toyota shut down (almost?) all domestic production facilities yesterday”

  1. Patomaru on January 20th, 2009 1:14 pm

    What happens to the workers during the plant shutdowns? I am sure it has been discussed before and I just missed it, but do those working in the factories get paid? If so, is Toyota just shutting the factories down to save on material cost?

  2. Ken Worsley on January 20th, 2009 3:08 pm

    Toyota has reportedly been asking employees to use paid leave on these days,

  3. Patomaru on January 21st, 2009 8:21 am

    Do temp employees even get paid leave?

  4. Ken Worsley on January 22nd, 2009 12:19 am

    It depends on the contract. In general, “full time” temp workers get what the law mandates.

    See Chapter 4 of the Labor Standards Law:
    http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/WEBTEXT/27776/64846/E95JPN01.htm#a032

    Scroll down to the section “Annual Leave With Pay” (or just hit Control+F and paste that in).

    Obviously, the law is vague, especially in the two bullet points under section 3. In practice, it seems as though most workers who qualify for social insurance (ie, contracted to work 29.5 hours a week or more), are given their annual paid leave, starting at the legal minimum of 10 days per year. Those who work fewer hours than that generally do not get paid days off. However, I am aware of cases where contract employees qualify for social insurance yet do not get the legal minimum of paid days off, and that seems to be possibly backed up by the wording under section 3.

  5. Jon on January 30th, 2009 1:19 am

    Toyota told us we could use vacation time or we could take no pay days and them not count against us or we could come in and work in a non production compacity. And they are still letting the temps work like that also.

  6. Ken Worsley on January 30th, 2009 1:42 am

    Jon,

    What is a non production capacity? Kaizen? Same as the old unpaid overtime?

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