Guardian UK: Toyota's European workers face three-day week

[marmar]

Toyota's European workers face three-day week

David Gow in Geneva
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 March 2009 14.29 GMT


Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, is considering plans to put its European workforce on a three-day week as it forecasts the biggest slump in car sales for 35 years.

Senior executives at the annual Geneva motor show, which opened today, forecast overall European sales will collapse by 30% this year to 15m cars and vans, bottoming out later this year. Recovery will take three or four years.

The UK market, they said, will see just 1.5m cars sold or 900,000 fewer than the 2.4m sold just two years ago - a decline of 37.5% and worse than the industry lobby, the SMMT, expects. It has forecast sales of 1.72m in 2009.

Toyota employs 22,000 in Europe, including some 4,500 in Britain, mainly at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire. It is already discussing one option of cutting working hours by 10% with Unite, the main industry union, with a decision due in the next two weeks. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/03/toyota-car-crisis-europe

[doc03]

1. Gee I thought Toyota was produceing the cars everyone

wanted, why would they cutting back on work days?

[rpannier]

2. I thought it was their non-union labor contracts that everyone wanted.

Well...that richard shillby, the republikkans and their enablers wanted