Tell Toyota: Keep NUMMI open! (apparently Toyota feels American workers are more expendable)

[Omaha Steve]

For 25 years NUMMI workers have made award-winning, high-quality cars for Toyota. While the economic crisis has affected the auto industry worldwide, Toyota has never closed a factory or laid off a single full-time worker in Japan -- apparently Toyota feels American workers are more expendable.

The closure of NUMMI will have a devastating impact on California's already ailing economy and on every California family. At stake are the jobs of 4,500 autoworkers and 50,000 supplier and support workers at more than 1,000 businesses throughout the state. Job loss of this magnitude will have a crippling effect on small businesses in many communities and drastically reduce tax revenue needed for roads, parks, schools and other public services.



California is by far Toyota's single biggest market for automobile sales in the United States. Californians, and in fact all Americans, have supported Toyota not only as consumers but as taxpayers, financing the recent federal "cash for clunkers" program which benefited Toyota more than any other car company. And now Toyota has launched a $1 billion marketing campaign to increase sales in California and the United States -- at the same time they are shipping our jobs away!

We have the power to insist Toyota honor its commitment to produce quality cars in California. Sign the petition and take the pledge not to purchase Toyota products if Toyota closes the NUMMI plant. By standing together we can save 50,000 good-paying jobs.

TELL TOYOTA TO KEEP NUMMI OPEN!

Sign The Petition Today!: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/nummi2

[divideandconquer]

1. Of all the major carmakers, toyota is the most evil

The Dark Side of the Toyota Prius
By PAUL ABOWD

The National Labor Committee (NLC), a New York-based human rights group, has been investigating working conditions at Toyota Motor Corp., and the labor used to produce its best-selling Prius hybrid cars.

In its 65-page report released in June, NLC includes first-hand testimony of factory conditions in “Toyota City,” outside of Nagoya, Japan — less than 200 miles southwest of Tokyo — where the largest auto company in the world employs some 70,000 people.

The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers 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.” Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.
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<http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3796/the_dark_side_of_the_toyota_prius/>