Toyota, Trust, and Talk

A few days ago, I did a post about the demise of trust and its impact on employers and employees.  About three months ago, I did a post on employment lessons to be learned from Toyota’s recent problems (which have gotten worse since the post). It’s fair to say that Toyota receives mixed reviews on how it’s handled the safety concerns that won’t go away. There are still lessons to be learned, and Toyota’s final review won’t occur until much later.

Last night while watching 24 (which I’m afraid is more true than not), I saw a Toyota commercial focusing on the hit its reputation has taken this year and saying that the company is now spending $1 million an hour on safety. That would be $24 million a day, almost $9 billion a year (if my sometimes inaccurate math is accurate this time). Maybe they meant $1 million an hour based on an eight-hour workday, which would make it only $8 million a day, almost $3 billion a year.

Toyota’s talk tripped my trust switch. I’m not saying you can’t trust Toyota. I’m saying that when a claim like this is made, one has to wonder about it because trust is at an all time low. Everyone gets carried away with talk sometimes. Employers tell employees that if they add benefits to their wages, the employees are really making two or three times what they thought they were — until someone better at math than I runs the numbers.

During Toyota’s troubles, its previous safety record has been given short shrift. A few problems shouldn’t overcome an entire history. If trust is really dead, then neither safety nor a commercial about it matters. If it does matter in a workplace, however, there will be far fewer employment law problems. As Dragnet’s Friday would say, just the facts ma’am.