Originally published February 12 2006
American encounters abuse and control at Toyota
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
An American engineer chronicled his three-year employment for Toyota in Japan, revealing brutal managers, poor attitude toward female workers and accidents that resulted in fatalities.
In 1996, Darius Mehri, a wide-eyed young American engineer, went to Japan to work for Toyota's production system.
Bosses publicly bullied subordinates, sometimes even physically, as in one incident Mehri describes in which a manager wrestled an unfortunate employee to the floor - several times - at a department dinner party.
Based on the author's diary of a three-year stint as a contracted employee, Notes from Toyota-Land runs contrary to the image many Westerners have of an efficient and enlightened Japanese workplace.
At first Mehri wondered why his fellow employees deferred to their sometimes brutal managers.
But he eventually realized that, because there were no formal training programs, many workers felt they had no choice but to curry the favor of supervisors who they hoped would act as their senpai, or mentors.
For some this meant attending frequent and expensive after-work drinking parties that ran late into the night.
Providing sharp insights into the culture that created this environment, the author explains how the importance of belonging to a group is drilled into the Japanese consciousness from the first day of school.
This mentality was a key element of the company culture, where group loyalty - especially loyalty to your boss - was more highly regarded than talent, and disloyalty was punished severely.
Emphasis on speed at the expense of safety caused frequent accidents and sometimes even resulted in fatalities.
Banners with meaningless safety slogans, such as "Let's work hard to make our shop safe and clean" hung on factory walls, without any explanations on how to be safe.
One of the book's weakest points is that Mehri offers no comparisons with Western firms for the sake of perspective.
Still, despite its flaws, "Notes from Toyota-Land" is an attention-grabbing look at the dark side of company that many experts predict will soon be the world's number one automaker.
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