Evidence of the Economic Down Turn

At 7:00 pm on a Monday evening just a few people remain in the CAD room. Our allowable OT hours have been cut to the point where even cheating the system, many of my coworkers have 'run out' of available OT. The Japanese government limit is 80 OT hours per month, prior to the economic problems the company maximum was 45 which could be exceeded three times per year. Starting in October everyone's allowable hours were reduced according to a formula involving how many hours the group averages and how much the company need to cut to meet a requirement set by Toyota for all of the Toyota group companies. My OT limit for October was 30 hours, and in November it was reduced even further to 15. At first I was disappointed but now I wouldn't want to go back to 45.