Nippon Steel Corp. workers feel 'JCP effect'

Workers of a Yawata plant (Kitakyushu City) of Nippon Steel Corporation, Japan's largest steel maker, are beginning to feel the effect of what the Japanese Communist Party committee is doing in the effort to eliminate unpaid overtime work.

In the last two months, JCP Yawata Plant Committee members distributed 18,000 copies of four leaflets against unpaid overtime work at the company gate three days a week in early mornings and at company apartments after work.

JCP members talked with people in managerial positions as well as union officials affiliated with the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo). The JCP showed them the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's circular instructing abolition of overtime work without pay and the JCP emergency economic proposal calling for democratic control of the activity of major corporation. Many people agreed with the JCP proposal.

An employee in a managerial position surprised the workers in his section by showing them a JCP leaflet and telling them to report how many hours they worked while he is away so that he can keep accurate records for reporting.

The Nippon Steel Corporation Yawata Plant has no work time recorders. In technical and administrative sections, employees frequently work till after midnight. But they are told to ask for the payment of overtime only up to 20 hours a month. They can not take day offs in exchange for unpaid work as the workplace is short-staffed.

To improve the situation, the JCP committee talked with people in supervisory positions and trade union executives. During the talks it became clear that the practice of working overtime without pay arises mainly from the company's cost-cutting strategy. Engineers are told to cut costs corresponding to outside subcotractors whose unit prices are pegged at 40 percent of the company cost. Outside subcontractors are obliged to cut costs to compete with cheaper Asian unit prices.

The number of Nippon Steel Corporation workers declined by more than 60 percent from 52,000 in 1993 to 19,000 in September 2000. The company slashed costs by 60 billion yen (500 million dollars).

The JCP emergency economic proposal calls for legal measures to protect small- and medium- sized subcontractors from arbitrary unit-price cutting by large corporations. In the JCP talks with related companies, the representatives acknowledged such measures as necessary conditions for improving the working conditions at their companies.

The JCP Yawata Plant committee chair said that he was convinced that it is possible to develop common action because "managerial staff members and trade union executives responded favorably to our proposal." (end)