When Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) announced that is had sold its one-millionth Prius hybrid car, environmentalists worldwide stood up and cheered. After all, it was Japanese foresight that saw the need for 45-MPG cars more than just a few years ago and all it took for the sales to take off was the onslaught of $4/gallon gas. But as this National Labor Committee analysis explains, is Toyota the touchy-feely auto manufacturer that it seems to be? In a word, no.

The push to get products to the market as fast as possible (hopefully, the "right" products) has turned Toyota into a labor-abusing monolith of corporate greed, according to the article. While General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) pays its workers very well from a labor standpoint and gives the labor force a large voice, Toyota's workers are overworked, underpaid and abused in other ways. Is there a good, middle ground? The appetite of U.S. consumers to purchase more fuel-efficient cars -- something Detroit is still unprepared for in many ways -- is giving Toyota unprecedented levels of new business. All this business is creating demand, and in turn, Toyota must form a method to get those products out the door. According to the NLC, turning the screws on human labor rights is the key to all this.

Is it really the "race to the bottom?" As in, the bottom of the price barrel where "worst practices" are adopted as a form of competitive pressure to ensure those sales continue to rack up? The distinction between labor practices for Toyota's Japanese workers and GM's American workers is pretty stark in this example. It seems to strongly suggest that all those Prius owners who believe they are helping the world by bellowing out less emissions and wasting less gas are paying for it in another way -- in the form of human rights abuses they never see.