By concentrating production on one part in one factory, Uesawa hoped to give Fujita the production scale needed to improve efficiency, a key to reducing cost. Uesawa boasts that none of the 150 small firms Calsonics relied on for components has gone belly-up since Ghosn took over. Instead, he has gradually reorganized and improved production among his extended family of component factories, taking business away from some firms and concentrating production in others. Some factories that once worked for Nissan now produce only for Toyota or Mazda. Uesawa acknowledges that many contractors reduced their payrolls, though he doesn't know how many jobs were lost.
Temporary workers receive few benefits and no job guarantees.
Nissan itself will say only that it cut 23,000 jobs in Asia last year, virtually all of them in Japan, though it did hire 9,400 workers for factories in Latin America. Even after layoffs at giant firms such as Nissan, record bankruptcies among medium-sized companies and an enduring economic slowdown, unemployment in Japan remains below 5 percent. He didn't ask for small cuts. He demanded huge ones. Today Fujita pays himself a smaller salary, hires housewives as piece workers and even uses inmates from a nearby prison to lower his labor expenses.