 Industrial accidents on the increase in Japan By Workplace Issues Research Team (Part Two) Extreme personnel cuts The rapidly increasing work-related accidents are caused mainly from excessive personnel cuts carried out by large corporations governed by their profit-first principle, though the increase is partly connected to corporate failure to completely abide by the Industrial Safety and Health Law and related laws. Under the globalization of the economy, Japan's large corporations have carried out drastic cost cuts under the slogan of achieving international competitiveness to win the international corporate competition. It should be noted that changes in foreign exchange rates is the biggest factor affecting international competitiveness. Large corporations, however, impose wage cuts and extreme personnel reductions by describing high costs as adversely affecting international competitiveness. These corporate actions have now led to a sharp increase in industrial accidents. To begin with, production programs and personnel plans in Japan's large corporations are almost unthinkable in that they are based on an extremely reduced numbers of personnel. This issue was taken up by the Japanese Communist Party in the early 1990s when it proposed a drastic revision of the Labor Standards law. The JCP unveiled that a corporate production program in Germany is based basically on the premise that workers do not work overtime and fully use their paid holidays, assuming the rate of absences to be from 15 to 17 percent. By contrast, Japan's large corporations at that time used to estimate the absence rate to be as low as 5 percent. The hallmark of corporate restructuring and personnel cuts, which has been in full swing since the late 1990s, is that the already low number of personnel is further reduced. For example, let us compare the developments of crude steel output at Nipppon Steel Corporation and the number of personnel. NSC maintained crude steel output at the level of 30 million tons in the late 1970s. The output slightly increased to 31.68 million tons in 1980, and it leveled off at the 20 million ton mark from 1981 to 2002. In 2003 it went back up to 30.14 million tons. What has become of the workforce? A comparison of 1984 and 2002 in the total number of regular workers, related workers and subcontract workers, computed from various data, shows that the workforce, which was 114,500 in 1984, was drastically cut to 53,500 in 2002. In two decades, crude steel production per worker increased 2.16 times, while the number of workers declined to less than half. This discrepancy cannot be explained by technological progress and the resultant high productivity and labor-saving effect. It can be said to be the clearest evidence that the number of personnel has been reduced even beyond sustainable limits. The Asahi Shimbun on November 26, 2003 expressed alarm at the deaths from accidents at NSC. The newspaper had every reason to point out, under a big headline, the possibility that the substantially restructured workforce at the production line cannot keep up with production quotas at such a high level. Personnel reduction caused by corporate restructuring while technological renovation is in progress force workers to work long hours on tight work schedules. Under the European Union (EU) labor safety and health directives, work hour regulations are regarded as part of the framework for labor safety and health. It is because the European Commission (EC) reached the conclusion that working long hours increases errors, with a higher risk of accidents. It was a clear correlation between long-working hours and tight work schedules and work-related accidents. From this viewpoint, the EU countries make it a rule that average working hours in a week should not be over 48 hours, including overtime hours worked. In Japan, however, over 8 million workers work more than 60 hours a week. Some workers who applied for paid holidays in advance were made to come to work because the work schedule does not allow two workers to be off at once, for a holiday or for a sick leave, because the personnel situation is so tight. Under the inhumane rules of the workplace, workers feel that they have to endure a little sickness and go to work every day. The situation is more serious with subcontract workers and related workers. At a steel subcontract workshop, workers have a set of 10 days a month in which they have to work 12 hours non-stop, including a night shift. A worker fell off from a workplace ladder and was injured, which is highly unlikely under normal circumstances. This is the background behind the increasing accidents. (end of part two) |