JCP activists in major companies take to streets

Leaders of Japanese Communist Party organizations in the nation's major
steel, automobile, electric, and shipbuilding companies held a speech
assembly in front of JR Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on October 25 to call for
a joint struggle against anti-worker corporate restructuring.

Speakers were from Nippon Steel Corporation Yawata Works and Hirohata
Works, NKK Corporation Keihin Works, Kawasaki Steel Corporation Chiba Works,
Sumitomo Metal Industries Wakayama Steel Works, Toyota Motor Corporation,
Mazda Motor Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Itami Office,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Nagasaki Shipyard, and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy
Industries Tokyo Office.

In their speeches, they said that some 9,900 employees have left Toyota
Motors in the last eight years and the remaining workers are forced to work
until midnight without overtime pay, and that Sumitomo Metal's Wakayama
Steel Works intends to dismiss 9,000 workers who are now working in
affiliate companies and make them employed by these affiliate companies with
30-40 percent lower wages.

An electronics company employee who was listening to the speeches said,
"Companies have secured their profits. It stands to no reason that they
carry out such drastic restructuring. Company profits must be shared with
their employees and restructuring is not necessary." (end)