Toyota cost-cutting program

[Al Hector]

Source: IHT

Toyota Motor said on Thursday that buyouts for factory workers, possibly shorter workweeks and reductions in executive compensation would be part of an emergency cost-cutting program it announced last week.
The measures disclosed on Thursday affect about 18,000 employees at Toyota's plants in the United States. Similar steps are being taken at company plants in Canada and Britain.

Toyota, which has a philosophy of lifetime employment for its permanent employees, said it did not plan to eliminate any of its full-time workers' jobs.
But it is offering a voluntary exit program that includes 10 weeks' salary, plus two weeks' salary for every year worked, and a $20,000 departure bonus. It does not have a goal for the number of workers it hopes will take the plan.

More detail at following link:
https://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/business/13auto.php

 

[bobdoering]

Lindsay Chappell
Automotive News
February 12, 2009 - 11:39 pm ET

NASHVILLE -- Still refraining from laying off any North American workers, Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday night that it is freezing wage, reducing hours and adopting a voluntary exit program.

The new measures, which Toyota dubbed a "shared sacrifice" philosophy, come as the automaker faces its first financial losses since 1950 and the unfamiliar specter of idle factory lines.

Toyota has gone out of its way to keep its mostly non-union U.S. and Canadian production workers on the clock, even as it has shut down assembly lines.

But a statement released by Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc., the company's U.S. manufacturing headquarters, said there is now a "strong possibility" that it will reduce work and pay at some plants.

Toyota is considering a schedule in which some workers would work 72 hours in a typical 80-hour, two-week period.

Other provisions

Toyota says it will also:

• Add three to eight additional non-production days per factory to its North American schedule through April 30;

• Reduce bonuses for hourly workers;

• Eliminate bonuses for North American executive and salaried workers; and

• Offer no wage increases "for the foreseeable future."

The company will also offer a "voluntary exit program" for workers who want to leave. That plan will provide 10 weeks of pay, two weeks of compensation for every year an employee has worked, and a $20,000 lump payment to any worker who wants to leave