A JCP handbill and an e-mail cause unpaid overtime at Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries to end

A copy of a Japanese Communist Party handbill was effective in ending
unpaid overtime work at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plant in Kakogawa City
in Hyogo Prefecture.

The JCP handbill was distributed to let workers know that the Health,
Labor, and Welfare Ministry had issued a circular calling for unpaid
overtime to be ended. The JCP branch at the plant did so because it knew
that many workers at the MHI plant were forced to do overtime work without
pay.

The wife of a MHI worker who received the handbill sent an e-mail to the
JCP Takasago Branch, the address of which she found in the handbill. She
wrote that her husband works till midnight every day, has to work on
holidays, and works over 100 extra hours a month but is only paid for 40
hours.

The JCP branch monitored when workers left work.

One day in September, 1,500 workers out of 4,000 workers at the MHI
Takasago plant and a laboratory left between 8 p.m. and 12 midnight. About
200 left between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m.

Based on this survey, the JCP branch asked the Kakogawa Labor Standards
Inspection Office for assistance. About three weeks later, the labor
standards inspection office made an on-the-spot inspection in the company.

As a result of the inspection, the company made it a rule to turn lights
off at 9:30 p.m. About one week following the inspection, the rule began to
be generally observed. The company began to pay workers their overdue unpaid
overtime since April.

The JCP branch in November again surveyed workers' leaving time, and 86
left after 11 p.m, less than half in the first survey.

At first, some foremen were hostile to the labor standards inspection
office's intervention, grumbling, "Who reported?"

Now they say to JCP branch members, "Thanks. We can go home earlier and
are paid when we do overtime." (end)