GEORGETOWN, KY.

Community board shares concerns of Toyota workers

Toyota workers at the company’s Georgetown, Ky., assembly plant didn’t want to talk trash about their employer. They just wanted to share their concerns and help make the Japanese carmaker a better place to work.

So 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.

Toyota workers had a chance to be heard by the general public June 10 at a hearing organized by Kentucky Jobs with Justice (JwJ), one of 40 labor-community-religious coalitions across the United States. Founded in 1987, JwJ’s 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.

“We are trying to make Toyota better and have a better partner in the community,” said the Rev. John Rausch of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, who opened the hearing.

At the June event, current and former Toyota workers spoke 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.”