Is Toyota's Brakes Disaster Tied to How It Treats Workers Like Profit-Oriented Robots?

A worker (C) walks between newly assembled Toyota Prius hybrid vehicles near the company's plant in the city of Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, on March 3. Toyota sought Tuesday to dispel fears about the safety of its electronics, but was put on the defensive when a Prius went speeding out of control along a California highway.

Photo Credit: AFP/File - Kazuhiro Nogi

A century ago, Frederick W. Taylor, the mechanical engineer whose book The Principles of Scientific Management influenced generations of business owners and managers, had this to say about American working people:

"Underworking  constitutes the greatest evil with which the working people are now afflicted.  Instead of using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, (a worker) deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can, to turn out far less work than he is well able to do; in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day's work."

With that contemptuous attitude at a time of sweatshop abuse and rampant child labor, Taylor proceeded to propose that every second and every movement at the workplace be monitored and scientifically managed to eliminate waste, inefficiency, and labor costs in the cause of high productivity and company profits.

Proponents of the so-called "Toyota Way" -- the production philosophy employed by the same Japanese giant now reeling from the recall of 8.5 million cars since November -- say it's a "democratic Taylorism" that values workers even as it pushes them constantly toward "continuous improvement," known in Toyota-speak as kaizen.

"The key difference between Taylorism and the Toyota Way is that the Toyota Way preaches that the worker is the most valuable resource -- not just a pair of hands taking orders, but an analyst and problem solver," writes Jeffrey K. Lyker in his laudatory 2004 book, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer.

Is the "Toyota Way" truly democratic? What role did it play in the current recall? These are questions you're never going to hear asked by the governors and members of Congress from Mississippi, Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, and other states where Toyota has built plants. All you're going to hear from them is a resounding "The Toyota Way Is Okay!"

Indeed, the "Toyota Way" of kaizen, "just-in-time" production, and so-called "lean management" is now taught in the public schools at Scott County, Ky., where the company built its first solely owned US plant in 1986 -- at a cost of nearly $150 million to Kentucky taxpayers.

Even kindergarteners now learn Toyota-think in Scott County, Ky. With Toyota-trained managers overseeing the process, students learn, for example, to be creative in determining what jobs can be eliminated at a work site without negatively affecting production. What they don't learn is to question the "Toyota Way."

Expect public schools in and near Blue Springs, Miss., where the company plans to build a $1.3 billion, 2,000-worker assembly plant, to be incorporating the "Toyota Way" into their future curricula. The University of Mississippi is already there. Earlier this month, the university's Undergraduate Council approved program and course changes in the School of Engineering that, in cooperation with the newly established Center for Manufacturing Excellence, will teach "lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System."

In his 1972 book, Factory of Despair: Diary of a Seasonal Auto Worker, Japanese journalist Kamata Satoshi described his six-month stint as a worker at the Toyota plant in Toyota City, Japan. The picture he painted was of a work culture that resembled the pre-United Auto Workers era at Ford and General Motors, when the "speed up" -- a management-ordered increase in worker production requirements to nearly impossible levels -- and the ever-present threat of layoffs were the rule.

After revisiting the plant a decade later, Satoshi found a feudalistic system still in place, one that might tout worker input and democracy but which in reality was more interested in worker control. In an interview with US journalist Tim Shorrock, Satoshi said he worried about future Toyota workers in the United States. "I think the miserable conditions of Japanese workers will be passed right on to American workers."