Labor Ministry acts against illegal corporate activities involving staffing contracts

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Labor Ministry acts against illegal corporate activities involving staffing contracts

The Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry on September 4 sent a directive to prefectural labor bureau chairs, asking them to increase efforts to thwart manufacturers from using workers staffed by outside contractors in order to evade responsibilities as employers.

In the instruction, the ministry ordered prefectural labor bureaus to encourage their employment security offices and labor standards inspection offices to share information and set a plan to oversee large manufacturing plants. It also instructed them to require companies using workers in violation of the Worker Dispatch Law to voluntarily inspect all of their offices and punish them if they continued the same illegal labor practice.

A growing number of Japan's major manufacturers, including Toyota Motor Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., and Canon Inc., as well as their affiliates, are illegally using workers dispatched by staffing contractors to their plants, as if they are outsourcing some of their jobs. The Worker Dispatch Law requires employers to offer temporary workers a full-time position after employing them for more than a year. In order to avoid this responsibility, they continue this illegal labor practice.

According to the Labor Ministry, in 2005 616 out of 879 staffing contractors as well as 358 out of 660 manufacturers engaged in this illegal labor practice.

Commenting on the labor ministry action, Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Koike Akira said that since he brought up this issue in the Diet four years ago, the JCP has urged the government to crack down on the illegal corporate activities. He said that the JCP will continue to make efforts to eliminate the illegal labor practice.
- Akahata, September 5, 2006