Japan 4: A visit to Toyota City
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Previous articles have looked at the remilitarisation of Japan, under US auspices, after World War 2, and the growth and promotion of yellow company unions, which now dominate in cars, steel, shipbuilding, etc. This article looks at how the system operates in a Japanese car plant.
TOYOTA City is about 200 miles from Tokyo, and an hour's ride on a modern subway train from Nagoya, one of Japan's major cities.
It is an old city, but has been completely taken over and re-named by the Toyota company, which dominates the city administration.
Four of Toyota's five assembly plants (in effect, stamping, body, paint and assembly complexes) are in Toyota City, as are three of its five supporting plants.
In addition to its Japanese plants, Toyota has 27 plants abroad — including assembly plants in 19 different countries. These range from plants in the USA to plants in Third World countries like the Philippines, where they take advantage of the conditions of dictatorship and the free trade zones.
Toyota was established in 1937. Since then its Japanese plants have produced 40 million cars.
No women
At the end of last year I visited the Takaoka assembly plant in Toyota City, which assembles a range of passenger cars — the Corolla, the Sprinter, the Corsa, the Corolla 2, the Tercel, and the Tercel four wheel drive.
To be more precise, I toured No.1 Final Assembly Shop of that plant, which assembles the Corolla, Tercel and Sprint.
No.1 Final Assembly employs 300 workers on each of two shifts. They are all men. No women work on production jobs.
The plant produces cars at 60 per hour day and night, with all three models as a mixed condition on a single track. This regularly means a monthly production figure of 20,000.
Staggering
Such production figures off a single track with mixed models, particularly a mixed condition, are staggering by European standards. BL, for example, rarely runs a track at more than 30 per hour because of the formidable technical problems involved, particularly with a mixed condition.
Precise comparisons of productivity levels are difficult because there are many variable factors, but the difference in productivity between Europe and Toyota is very great indeed.
The rate of exploitation in Toyota is absolutely brutal, consistently reaching the limits of physical endurance.
I watched assembly workers doing jobs which were more like an exercise in gymnastics than a work effort in a car plant. I did not see a single worker even pause for a few seconds during a work period for the whole time I was in the plant.
An overall comparison with BL is interesting. Structurally the two companies are very similar. The Toyota labour force is only slightly larger — 54,000 as against BL's 47,000. The processes are similar. Each manufactures the engines (most of them), the transmissions (most of them), builds the body, paints and assembles the car. Toyota buys in 70% of components, which is only slightly more than BL. The technical level in assembly is about the same. In body-build Toyota is rather more automated.
Exploitation
Some BL cars, like the Rover and the Jaguar, are a lot bigger and more complicated. But, having taken those factors into account, compare the production figures.
BL produces less than 750,000 vehicles per year. Toyota produces 3.2 million.
The factor overwhelmingly responsible for figures like that is the incredibly high rate of exploitation achieved in Japan — a rate which western manufacturers stand no chance of equalling, despite all their attacks on the unions.
It is no wonder that the world car manufacturers are interested in Japanese management techniques.
After visiting the factory I talked to a group of militant Toyota workers who were contacts of Rodo Joho. They gave me information about the yellow union structure and the working conditions in Toyota.
There are two federations covering car workers' unions in Japan, the 600,000 strong Jidosha Soren and the smaller, 220,000-strong Jidosha Roren. The Toyota union, a yellow company union, is affiliated to Jidosha Soren.
The Toyota union, like all the yellow unions, has an extensive structure through which it controls the workers. There are committees at every level — corporate, plant and section. This structure corresponds to and is integrated with the management structure.
The shop floor representative, or shop steward, each covering about ten workers, is invariably the section leader or sub-foreman. The representative on the committee above is normally the foreman, and above that the superintendent.
It is so difficult for the left to penetrate the system that even the Japanese Communist Party, which has between 50 and 100 members in Toyota, has only a few positions, and only at the very lowest level. (This is affected a bit by the policy of the JCP, which is to concentrate far more on parliamentary than on industrial questions).
The seniority wage system (described in detail in the second of these articles) is used to great effect in Toyota. A part of a worker's wage depends directly on the discretion of the foreman. Although theoretically it takes into account factors such as education and work performance, in reality the biggest factor is loyalty to the company. Management's intelligence service against both employees and potential employees is regarded by the workers as near-perfect from a management point of view.
A worker can therefore lose a lot of money if the foreman decides that he or she is in any way anti-management. Standing as a representative against the section leader or the foreman would be regarded as absolutely anti-management, and would result in the worker being witch-hunted as well as losing pay.
(Pay levels are difficult to translate into British terms, given their complicated structure, the rate of exchange, and the high prices in Japanese shops, but generally the standard of living of a Japanese car worker is a bit higher than his or her British counterpart).
Management control of the shop floor is absolute, and of course strikes are absolutely unknown. Militant workers wanting to make a protest have to find ways which in British terms seem small, but in Japanese terms are very difficult.
Standing as a representative is one way. If that is not possible, and generally it is not, asking a critical question at the 'tool box meeting' in the morning is a way of protesting, but even that can have effects on the seniority part of a worker's wage.
(It should be said that the day in factory begins with exercises to music, and then the tool box meeting, at which the foreman gives a lecture on productivity levels for the day. All this is in the workers' own time).
The extraordinary management pressure exerted on workers through the yellow union is demonstrated by the situation with holidays.
Personal holiday days are based on seniority. They start at eight days per year and rise to a maximum of 20.
Incredibly, none of Toyota's 54,000 workers takes more than half of his or her personal holiday entitlement. They are encouraged by the 'union' to donate holidays to the company, in order to improve productivity.
This extraordinary situation probably demonstrates more clearly than anything else the degree of control and commitment to the management which has been achieved through the techniques of the Japanese employers and the control of the yellow unions.
Such would be the pressure on any worker who wanted to take his or her full holiday entitlement, that none do. It would involve being seen as anti-management.
After that, it is not surprising that Toyota has considerable control in other directions. Within a plant mobility and flexibility, for example, is absolute. Any worker can be moved anywhere at any time without question. The agreement gives management the right to move a worker to another location, possibly over long distances, for a period of three months.
In addition, management are now promoting what they call multi-skills. For example, a worker will be both a maintenance welder and also work on the track.
The entire workforce is organised into QC circles (the principle and significance of these was detailed in the second article). These are groups of about ten workers. Their job is to discuss and improve such things as productivity, quality and maintenance. They are presented as 'workers' participation' and 'workers' self-management'.
They used to be voluntary. Now they are compulsory (compulsory self-management?)
The requirements of productivity, however, restrict the activities of the QC circles in working hours. They are now allocated only two hours per month, which is inadequate for their role.
It is therefore normal for the QC circle to take place after working hours in the home of one of the workers in the group. There they discuss how they can work harder when they get back to work.
It is often not even possible for workers not committed to management to just go through the motions, since failure to produce positive results can be regarded as anti-management.
The extent of this, and the pressure involved, can be seen by a recent increase in the suicide rate in Toyota. Workers have left notes to the effect that they could not stand the pressure and meet the requirements of the QC circles.
The high work effort contributes to this as well, of course. Relief times (off track relief during the shift) is ten minutes morning and ten minutes afternoon — less than half the normal relief time in Britain.
Toyota have their own ways of establishing work effort. They don't use work study. They simply increase the effort until the worker cracks, then they decide if they will accept the cracking as genuine.
European managers may go on their pilgrimages to Japan and return starry eyed and determined to force such conditions on British car workers. They should remember, however, how far they have to go — even after the attacks on the unions over the past four years.