In the midst of the Toyota recalls, the car maker's well deserved public humiliation, and the congressional investigation of the company, it's time to ask about the automaker's workers role in this disaster.

Guess what?  Japanese workers warned management about the decline in product quality.  They were ignored.

David Macaray writes at Counterpunch: "For several years now, going back at least to 2000, union workers at Toyota assembly plants in Japan had been concerned about the decline in product quality.

"Tadao Wakatsuki, 62, was one such worker.  Wakatsuki and other members of the union he helped form (the All Toyota Labor Union) watched with increasing alarm as the company took shortcuts with product quality and factory working conditions in order to fulfill the demands of the burgeoning American market. More cars, more compromises, more risks.  What led Wakatsuki and his fellow workers to form their own union was the belief that the current one as ineffective and company-shy.   

"In a 2006 memo, Wakatsuki’s newly formed union reminded company executives that from 2000 to 2005, Toyota had recalled, for various reasons, more than 5 million cars, which represented more than one-third of all Toyotas sold, a staggering figure (and a revelation to most observers). 

"These workers blamed the recalls on a lack of adherence to traditional Toyota quality standards.  As Wakatsuki noted, every single car that came off the assembly line used to be tested for safety and quality.  By 2006, they were inspecting barely 60-percent of them. 

"And what was the result of the memo?  As expected, the executives did not respond.  “They completely ignored us,” Wakatsuki said.  'That’s the Toyota way.'

"For decades, the view that Japanese engineering and craftsmanship were superior to that of the U.S. has led consumers to avoid purchasing American cars (a phenomenon that nearly ruined Detroit), and, indirectly, to adopting the view that American workers were inferior to Japanese workers.  Indeed, I had friends who more or less ridiculed me for owning a Ford and a Buick, as if these cars were primitive junk.

"And as to the American worker’s inferiority or shoddiness, even foreign automakers themselves don’t believe in this silly myth.  Proof?  Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Volkswagen, et al, have seen fit to have U.S. workers assemble their cars.

"The critical lesson supplied by the Toyota recall is this:  We—the consumers, the public, the government—simply cannot trust the profit motive.  Unless properly regulated and supervised, the temptation to make greater and greater profits will always trump the impulse to proceed with caution.  Alas, some people actually thought Japan was immune to such an impulse.  Probably the same people who thought we could trust Wall Street."