Workers are beginning to fight back at Matsushita's TV plant

At Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, an Osaka-based major
electronics maker, workers are beginning to fight back after the Japanese
Communist Party branch publicly denounced the company's dirty tactics to cut
8000 out of its 45,000 jobs.

Matsushita's Ibaragi plant in Osaka Prefecture used to produce TV sets
but most of their production units have been moved out to Malaysia and
China. And now the company is persistently trying to compel employees in
their forties and fifties into taking early retirement.

Matsushita uses a room to isolate those who refuse to accept early
retirement. The company tells those in the room to "transform" themselves to
fit in to the company needs or quit. They are either told to learn computer
skills and English conversation or collect garbage in the plant. They are
harassed by being interviewed individually by the personnel manager, 11
times for some people.

The Japanese Communist Party Matsushita TV Branch denounced such
harassment as a human rights violation. JCP members distributed their branch
newspaper at the plant gate and called on Matsushita workers to struggle
against the company's job cuts.

Apparently influenced by JCP activities, Matsushita Electric's employees'
union, affiliated with the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo),
requested that the company stop harassing workers.

As a result of the union's efforts, one-on-one interviews with the
personnel manager came to a halt. (end)