Toyota will freeze the pay of its 4,500 British workers in an attempt to beat the credit crunch. Despite these savings, the Japanese car and van maker will continue its quest to cut costs in response to an unprecedented fall in the global demand for new cars and vans. Toyota has also said that it will not pay management bonuses at this time.
Toyota is likely to consider short-time working and a voluntary redundancy scheme to achieve its goals. Given the severity of the current economic crisis on the automotive industry, Toyota may need to follow the lead of Nissan, General Motors (parent company of Vauxhall) and BMW / Mini amongst others by making compulsory redundancies.
Toyota employs almost 3,900 people in Derbyshire and nearly 600 at Deeside. The Derbyrshire plant will shortly begin a two-week shutdown in an effort to match supply with the ever falling demand for new cars.
Toyota manufacture the Aygo, Yaris, Avensis together with the Toyota Hilux pickup van.
