Yazaki wire harness plant, Nicaragua.
Here, workers (70% of them women) assemble wire harnesses
for Toyota N. America among other Yazaki customers.
They are said to earn around $0.41/hour (in mid-2000s).
Women who want to work here have been allegedly forced to strip completely
and parade before the plant management before they can be hired.*
This plant is documented to ship tens of millions of dollars worth of wire harnesses to the US annually. Meanwhile, Yazaki executives, including the one in Kentucky who managed the Toyota account, fixed the wire harness prices and got rich enough to pay hundreds of millions in fines to the DOJ.
According to a three-count felony charge, Yazaki engaged in three separate conspiracies: to rig bids for and fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of automotive wire harnesses and related products from 2000 through 2010; to rig bids for and fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of instrument panel clusters from 2002 through 2010; and to fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of fuel senders from 2004 through 2010. All three conspiracies involved products sold to customers in the United States and elsewhere.
Full DOJ press release here.
This was only one portion of $2.4 billion in fines paid for auto parts price fixing.
List of companies and individuals charged in auto parts price-fixing investigation is here.
Yazaki's Nicaragua supplier joint venture, called Arnecon, was founded in the city of León in 2001, as a technology company, the first company that came to diversify the areas of Zona Franca, which is dedicated to the development of tools and electronic components for the automotive industry.
Currently have 4 floors and 1 floor arneseras cable, which proves to be a vertically integrated company in the sector currently generates 9,436 direct jobs and expects to end 2012 with 10,000 workers.
* auto-parts-workers-in-nicaragua-denied-their-rights-paid-just-41-cents-an-hour
Company president Shinichi Yazaki
took a 50% pay cut for 3 months when the company was busted for price fixing.