 6.9 billion yen of unpaid overtime for 2 yrs in TEPCO Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on March 30 revealed that its 25,900 employees had worked overtime without pay, equivalent to about 6,948 million yen, for the two years between July 2002 and June 2004. TEPCO said that as a result of a survey conducted after the revelation last November that 2,800 employees at its head office had been forced to do unpaid overtime work worth about 1,441 million yen, the company found out that it must pay its employees in all offices back pay that surpasses 6.5 billion yen, the amount The Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc. paid in back pay. TEPCO promised to take preventive measures by recording employees' actual working hours. TEPCO workers have been requesting that their union carry out a fact-finding survey and address the issue, showing concrete examples in The Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc. and The Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc. that redressed unpaid overtime issues. Also, in a shareholders general meeting last June, there were calls for a survey of all employees to be conducted for the elimination of unpaid overtime. Last April, Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Koike Akira together with TEPCO workers visited the Tokyo Labor Bureau to accuse the company of ongoing unpaid overtime work and demanded that the bureau direct TEPCO to address the issue. (end) |