The weekly 40 working hours for some 800 Yazaki Samoa factory workers will be reduced starting February to 32 hours. It’s a decision the management of the wire harnessing group says has been taken instead of taking the redundancy option. Yazaki Samoa Managing Director, Funefe’ai Oliva Vaai made this announcement following several discussions with Yazaki’s biggest client, Toyota in Australia. “We need to do something so that we don’t lose out,” he says. There is a drop in the sales of vehicles in Australia, especially the Toyota line. It’s affecting the money that’s also being brought into the company in Samoa. “The Toyota manufacturers have their holidays at this time of the year and it’s a 10 days off. We’re expected to take that time off as well.
Staying above water: “But in the past, we managed to align that throughout the year too but when their sales are high, the money we get is also high so we’ve never seen the Samoan workers having to take those days off because they needed to work and the money was enough from Toyota to pay them,” says Funefe’ai.” “This year, however, although Toyota has earned the biggest sales in Australia, it has dropped says Funefe’ai and Yazaki Samoa hasn’t done well in its revenue either compared to the previous years, so the extra money that used to cover the workers in the past isn’t available, says Funefe’ai so the days off have to be taken. Otherwise, the company would experience negative impacts in the long-term,” he says.
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