MELBOURNE, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- More than 3,000 Toyota Australia employees on Thursday went on a 48-hour strike over a pay dispute in Toyata's Melbourne and Sydney plants.

According to Toyota Australia spokeswoman Laura Hill, there was no production at the company's Altona manufacturing plant in Melbourne on Thursday, after just 400 of the normal 3,300 staff arrived for work.

"I'm at Toyota at the moment in Altona and there is no production today," Hill told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday. " We won't be producing any cars today and it's highly likely that the strike action will continue tomorrow."

The Altona plant produces the four-cylinder Camry, Hybrid Camry, and six-cylinder Aurion models, with more than 559 cars built per day. The strike action, organized by the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, is also affecting the Sydney parts distribution centres.

Similar strike action has affected Toyota's Melbourne and Sydney plant earlier this month, and Hill said it was costing Toyota an estimated 10.274 million U.S. dollars a day in lost sales, causing a domino-effect on suppliers and their employees, Toyota dealers and Toyota's reputation.

"The flow-on effect of this is very significant," she said. " When we look at our export business, we started exporting to the Middle East in 1996 and since then we've never missed an export shipment of vehicles to go (and) this industrial action threatens our reliability in terms of our export business."

Hill said no formal discussions were planned with the union on Thursday but they were "always willing to discuss".

Further strike action is planned for Friday, and next Thursday and Friday.

Source:Xiong Tong