Why are we organising Woven Union for Woven by Toyota employees?
Tech companies like Google, Meta or us at Woven used to follow a unique path of constantly moving towards providing high-and-competitive wages for employees, treating them well and with respect, and building long-term lasting mutual trust. The atmosphere of mutual trust and respect made it unnecessary and unreasonable for folks to unionize in such an environment.
What has changed?
Tech companies have universally stopped honoring their side of the deal.
The industry that was full of excitement, optimism, hard collaborative and efficient work is now full of distrust, worry and paranoia due to large layoffs, pay cuts, “return to office” mandates and management’s transactional approach to worker relationships. Workers who moved across the world to pursue their passion and achieve their goals now find themselves stressed, unsafe and unsure about their future.
And as our leader Akio Toyoda has said: one of the goals that Toyota must pursue as a company is Happiness. We can't build Happiness for others if people here are not happy themselves.
What will the Woven Union do?
Back in the day we took pride in the fact that our office was designed with our employees' input to make it a great place to work for everyone. Today we must take note of employees' feedback in how we design our work processes as a whole.
Woven Union is organizing to establish a constant and productive dialogue with our leadership to make sure we have our voices heard.
Our goal is to rebuild the mutual trust between the leaders of the company and the “Gemba” — the people on the shop floor who make things happen.
We strive to align with Toyota and follow Sustainable Development Goals initiatives to help us save the environment we all live in and create paths to sustainable development for us all.
It is our social obligation as the company developing mobility solutions and we must do better.
We are pushing for wide acceptance and adoption of work policies that are considerate towards all kinds of folks regardless of their individual circumstances.
We want everyone at the company to be compensated equitably, treated with respect and receive benefits appropriate for the work done. The union aspires to have every employee happy at work and so we request that the company builds a strong DEI organization and builds upon policies of zero tolerance for harassment, discrimination or retaliation.
And ultimately, we are committed to Toyota Motor Corporation success. We are passionate about the mission and deeply care about the value that Toyota brings to the world. We care about every Toyota customer and want to serve all of you as good as we possibly can. To achieve that we must constantly improve Woven by Toyota too in the spirit of Kaizen that is a Toyota's core principle.
We truly hope that Woven Union will be valuable to all employees and that we will be able to succeed together.