Toyota targetted by IAM
Thu, April 10, 2008

By NORMAN DE BONO, SUN MEDIA

Lee Sperduti and Ben Shuart are part of the in-house organizing committee in the union drive at the Toyota plant in Cambridge. (Sue Reeve, Sun Media)

Making inroads: Area auto plants face union organizing drives

Denied a job opportunity when she was on maternity leave, Sheri McKenny is waging a battle against Toyota Motor Co. to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

"I spoke to human resources," at Toyota's Cambridge plant when she was denied the hire. "I was told when you have a child, you make sacrifices."

That is when she filed the complaint which will be heard tomorrow.

"Other women in the plant have gone through this . . . It was a hard fight. They're a billion-dollar company fighting me over this. It seems they just try to get away with what they can."

McKenny now is working at Toyota, but her hire -- she was on contract when she went on maternity leave-- was delayed 13 months because she was told she did not have enough weeks on the job to be hired -- maternity leave did not count as work time, she said.

McKenny doesn't want other women to endure her struggle, so she also plans to support a union drive at the plant.

McKenny's case is an all-too-common story, says Lee Sperduti, who is spearheading the drive to organize the Cambridge plant for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

He walks into a Cambridge coffee shop and peels off his jacket, revealing a T-Shirt and emblazoned in white letters on a deep blue background is "IAM Toyota."

The drive, if successful, would make Cambridge Toyota's first independent plant in North America with a union, just as it is poised to open its newest plant in Woodstock in the fall.

"We have to make this clear, there are two things we have to keep separate," Sperduti says as he takes a seat in the coffee shop.

"There is Toyota, and there is local management in Cambridge. Toyota is a great company, a great business model, but the local management is the issue. They have no regard for the workers. They push the vehicles out, no matter what."

That translates into health and safety concerns which are ignored, he says, and workers signing union cards are searching for a voice from the shop floor to change the working conditions in the plant.

"We have job security in terms of our vehicles selling, but there is none in terms of health and safety. If you are hurt on the job, you could be done -- there is nothing to help you," says Sperduti.

Sperduti, who has been at Toyota about five years, is joined at the coffee shop by other workers active in the drive, including Ben Shuart who has been at Toyota 11 years.

"If you looked around the plant you would see numerous health and safety issues, human rights issues," says Sperduti, and adds that McKenny's story is similar to those of injured workers.

Toyota officials declined to be interviewed, but released a statement rejecting the organizers' claims, saying workers are heard and health and safety issues are paramount.

"The IAM seems to be using the media to make unproven allegations and representations. We don't intend to follow them into public debate and we do not believe our team members appreciate this type of tactic. The union does not understand our company values and all that we have achieved by working together," the statement says.

The issue is foremost for Woodstock because a successful union drive could threaten a possible expansion of the new plant, says Woodstock Mayor Michael Harding.

"Anything that threatens Toyota production is a threat to Cambridge and Woodstock," he says. "History tells us Toyota is a superb employer and that the employees are largely satisfied and happy to be part of the Toyota family."

With more than 4,000 workers there are bound to be concerns and some unhappy workers -- but they do not represent the automaker, Harding believes.

Doug O'Toole, a Kitchener lawyer with the firm Paquette, Travers and Deutschmann, is handling some wrongful dismissal lawsuits from former Toyota employees fired by the automaker, and believes the sheer number of hours workers put in is at the root of a lot of the concerns at the plant.

"If there is a recurring complaint, it is the amount of overtime employees are asked to work and they question the extent to which it is voluntary. They imperil their future at Toyota if they decline it," he says, adding some workers put in more than 60 hours a week.

"But in fairness to Toyota, there is no shortage of workers who want to work there. It still has a reputation in the community and a desirable place to work with high salaries."

Toyota has seen rapid growth in production demands without a retooling in more than 12 years, say the workers. And it is taking a toll because the work of assembling more than 300,000 vehicles a year is physically demanding, says Sperduti.

There is no employee association and some workers feel they have no voice to express concerns about their job or to offer suggestions on bettering the production system.

"There is no voice. We speak but we are not heard," says Shuart. "People are scared, they do not know their rights"

Workers are also scheduled to work 48 hours a week, eight of that is overtime at time-and-a-half and the money is good considering the base pay is $33 an hour.

But many want a change in the overtime schedule. They now work nine hours a day and another four hours every Saturday. Instead, some workers want four 10-hour shifts and one eight, or even four 12-hour shifts to free up their weekends to spend more time with their families.

"Now, when Sunday rolls around, I am exhausted. I don't have time with my family," says Shuart. "With a union, we can negotiate."

He agrees the technology and robotics are dated and the work stations are not ergonomically designed.

"I have been there 11 years and they have the same machinery as when I was first there. It is our bodies, our time and our sacrifices," he adds. "Our workforce physically is going downhill."

The plant instituted a lower pay scale for new workers, $24 an hour, and some benefits have been reduced.

Last month the machinist's union thought they had enough cards signed for a union vote but called it off when the automaker released a list of workers and there were more names on it than the union anticipated, meaning they didn't have 40 per cent of workers sign cards, the minimum needed.

"I think we have a chance at this, but it will be close," Sperduti says.

Toyota has unions at plants in Japan and Australia and there's a union at a plant in California operated jointly by Toyota and GM, says Sperduti.