Would you buy the best car available if it relied on slave labor to build it?

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.

Low-wage temporary workers make up one-third of Toyota’s Prius assembly-line workers, mostly in the auto-parts supply chain. They are signed to contracts for periods as short as four months, and are paid only 60 percent of a full-time employee’s wage.

Parts plants run by subcontractors advertise standard, nine-hour, five-day-a-week jobs. But according to the NLC, “the typical shift was 15 to 16.5 hours a day, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. or 1:00 a.m.”

In 2002, Kenichi Uchino, 30, died while working at the “green” Tsutsumi plant that assembles the Prius. During the 13th hour of a routine 14-hour day, Uchino collapsed on the shop floor of the internationally lauded “sustainable” factory, which uses sulfur-oxide-eating paint and boasts 5 percent emissions reductions. A Japanese court ruled that Uchino’s death was caused by exhaustion from overwork.
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http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3796/the_dark_side_of_the_toyota_prius/

they exploit east asian workers the same way.

frankly, I think this is a VERY wide-spread practice

I bought a Ford Escape Hybrid, built in KCMO. And very happy with the whole thing.

Everything from clothes to kitchen appliances to tools. I have my eye on a Honda (Fit or Element) and could be these are manufactured in the same way by kidnapped enslaved Asians.

Matter of fact, and I'll try to come up with a category, but I can't think of a single thing that the Prius is "best" at.

And this isn't quite slave labor but that would certainly be the next step.

I haven't been much of a Prius fan since reading about the who/what/where about the materials they use to achieve their remarkable mileage.

Besides, so much of it is about HOW you drive, not just what you drive.

Chinese built BMW's, Mercedes, Lexuses, Cadillacs, Volvos are just right around the corner.

Google the Geely GE and tell me what you see.

Ultimately, this is unsustainable, yes?

apples and oranges.

That gets 36 MPG and was paid off decades ago , They can keep their new fall apart plastic crap and ugly designs , My car still keeps ticking like an old made in USA timex watch that I still happen to have and it still works by the way. It needs no batteries and winds just find with self wind and a few new bands.