In the midst of seemingly weekly announcements of layoffs and shutdowns in the Canadian auto industry, check out this story from the U.S. noting how Toyota will not layoff workers in Texas and Indiana, even though the factories they work at are shutting down for 14 weeks. Instead, Toyota, in keeping with a purported corporate policy of ‘no layoffs’, and will assign the workers to training and various other activities to keep them busy during the shutdown. This move could cost the company up to $50 million.
The ‘no layoffs’ policy is an example of a human resource policy intended to dissuade workers of the need for union representation. In an industry that is heavily unionized around the world, Toyota has been quite successful at keeping unions out of their factories. This is certainly true in Canada, where organizing campaigns by both the CAW and the Machinists to organize the employees at the Cambridge factory in recent years have failed. I’m not aware if the Cambridge facility has had layoffs in the past, or if Toyota Canada has claimed reliance on a ‘no layoffs’ policy. If anyone knows, please let me know.
Thanks to Workplace Prof Blog for the heads up on this story.
