Toyota took no action to address complaint: lawyer

The attorney for a woman who is accusing a Toyota executive of sexual harassment has claimed the automaker took no action on her complaints for months.

Toyota Motor Corp has scrambled to show its commitment to cracking down on discriminatory behavior since Sayaka Kobayashi filed a US$190 million sexual harassment lawsuit on May 1 in New York.

The lawsuit accuses Hideaki Otaka, 65, former president and chief executive of Toyota Motor North America, of making repeated unwanted sexual advances while she worked as his personal assistant last year.

Christopher Brennan, Kobayashi's lawyer, said Friday that his firm Ziegler, Ziegler & Associates contacted Toyota about Kobayashi's complaints in January, but the world's No. 2 automaker did nothing until the lawsuit was filed.

"It seems to us their response is an acknowledgment that the problem is much more pervasive," he said in a telephone interview from New York. "Where were they prior to the lawsuit?"

Toyota a new management team on Tuesday at the Japanese automaker's US unit, naming as president Jim Press, an American who headed Toyota's US sales unit.

Toyota vowed to review company practices and increase training for senior executives to prevent misconduct.

The company has also set up a special task force under former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, a diversity expert, to make sure it complies with anti-discrimination standards.

Press this week that Toyota will grow stronger because of the scandal.

"We are going to make sure that this is a learning process," he said at a luncheon gathering for Inforum, a women's business association, in Detroit.

The lawsuit against Otaka is a major embarrassment for Toyota at a time when it is boosting market share in the US and reporting hefty profits.

Toyota, also targeted in the suit, has declined comment.

Japanese have often been castigated for their slow cultural changes regarding women's roles and advancement in the workplace.

In 1996, a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed in the US against another major Japanese automaker, Mitsubishi Motors Corp, on behalf of more than 300 female workers who complained about sexually explicit comments and groping by male workers.

Although Otaka stepped down as head of Toyota's US operations on Tuesday, he said he did so to avoid trouble for the company, and that he expects to be vindicated.

Kobayashi's said that Otaka manipulated her travel and work schedules so they were alone together, and that he groped her at a Washington hotel and in New York's Central Park.

Toyota have an effective system in place to handle complaints about sexual harassment and failed to begin an investigation when Kobayashi asked for help, Brennan said.

Kobayashi, 42, went to human resources and then to the second-highest official at Toyota North America, but all she got was advice to work it out privately by talking with Otaka, Brennan said.