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Alesia Murdoch has spent 11 years building transmissions at the Toyota Motor Corp. plant in Buffalo, W.V. Yesterday, she got a new job: Lobbyist.
Murdoch was one of 23 U.S. employees of the Toyota City, Japan-based carmaker to visit lawmakers’ offices in advance of congressional hearings into millions of vehicles recalled for sudden acceleration, Bloomberg reported.
She said she and her fellow employees wanted to remind lawmakers that while Toyota is Japanese-owned, many of the workers affected by the recalls and inquiries are American.
“We stand behind our products,” she told Bloomberg between stops. “We may have had a little setback, but we’re going to come out stronger.”
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has recalled almost 8 million vehicles on five continents to repair defects linked to unintended acceleration. At least three U.S. congressional committees plan hearings into whether the recalls were handled properly by Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Failing to address the issues more swiftly has led to global criticism, a member of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s cabinet said today. “This might not have resulted in Japan- bashing and Toyota-bashing” with quicker action, Mizuho Fukushima, the minister in charge of consumer affairs, said in an interview in Tokyo.
The automaker sent people from eight states with company plants to Washington and covered their expenses, said Martha Voss, a company spokeswoman. The visits were timed to be a day ahead of the first hearing, which was scheduled for today and then postponed to Feb. 24 because of a snowstorm. Some employees said they hoped to return then.
The message was “how important we think our product is and how much we back our product,” said Joe Allen of Dunbar, W.V., who also works in Toyota’s Buffalo, W.V., plant.
Congress is “really hearing from local people,” said Amy Lindsey, who works in the company’s factory in Princeton, Ind. “They’re not hearing from management.”
Toyota employs 33,400 people in the U.S. and accounts for an additional 163,700 jobs at suppliers and dealers, according to the company’s website.
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