“We used to test every one of our cars for safety and quality,” said Wakatsuki. “Now we do maybe 60 percent. The old 100 percent is a thing of the past.”
“Our responsibility as a labor union was to point out these problems that Toyota should have known about. People were overworked; some were committing suicide,” Wakatsuki said. “Of course, Toyota did nothing, but looking back we see how important this was. We just told them what we saw.”