Private railway urges women station workers to engage in 24-hour work shift

Tobu Railway, a private railway company with a network around the Metropolitan area, proposed that its trade union accept a 24-hour work shift system for women workers at stations from next April, which has met with workers' objections.

Tobu asserts that the Law Concerning the Promotion of Equal Opportunity and Treatment between Men and Women in Employment (Equal Opportunity Law) requires that companies lift restrictions on women workers' working hours. The new system with only a four-hour nap, if introduced, will be applied to 38 women station workers.

Women workers are indignant at the proposal, saying, "The system should not be forcefully applied to those who don't want to accept it."

They insist that the original aim of the equal opportunity law is to help eliminate sex discrimination in workshops and safeguard appropriate labor conditions to protect motherhood.

A male worker who has been under the 24-hour shift for the past 37 years points out that a short nap is of no use and is too harsh even for male workers. Since stations at night are full of drunken people, they can be dangerous for women workers, he warns.

The Tobu Railway Workers' Union submitted a ten-point demand to the company, including exclusion of pregnant women from the system and allowing women with elementary and secondary school children to choose whether to accept it or not.

Women workers maintain that if Tobu introduces this measure, it should at least establish sleeping and bathing facilities for women only, and that Tobu and the union conclude an agreement that the system will be effective only when women agree to participate. (end)