Manufacturers React to Swine Flu

It’s all too easy to think of the automotive marketplace and industry as a completely insular world, affected only by such abstract nouns as “the economy” and such. However, as the ongoing swine flu outbreak has taught us, it’s anything but, as Honda and Denso have both already restricted international travel for their employees.

Suspending all international travel, Honda won’t be moving any employees around the world until May 6th at the earliest. As a precaution, the automaker is also considering moving all its Japanese employees currently working in Mexico back to Japan temporarily. Fellow Japanese part supplier Denso is also taking similar steps, and many other manufacturers are expected to do the same, should the swine flu become the dangerous pandemic suspected.