NTT workers win in lawsuit rejecting unjustifiable relocation

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NTT workers win in lawsuit rejecting unjustifiable relocation

The Sapporo District Court ruled on September 29 that it is illegal for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) to have relocated its workers to distant locations by forcibly carrying out its 110,000 personnel reduction plan in 2002.

The judge said that the relocation of all five plaintiffs was illegal because it was either unnecessary for NTT's business or ordered despite the workers' difficulties of moving to other locations such as the need to take care of their parents. The court ordered the company to pay all plaintiffs a total of 3 million yen in compensation.

NTT forced all its employees 51 years or older to retire, and rehired them at its affiliated companies with 15 to 30 percent wage cuts. In this process, it relocated Tele-Communication Workers' Union members who refused to accept the unfair treatment to distant locations as punishment and as a warning to other employees.

The plaintiffs, their lawyers, and the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren)-affiliated Tele-Communication Workers' Union jointly stated, "The court ruling giving the plaintiffs overall victory is epoch-making in that it amounts to condemning the NTT's personnel reduction plan."

Zenroren also issued a statement that the court decision will put a brake on the relocation of workers that major companies are arbitrarily carrying out in their own corporate restructuring schemes.

Similar lawsuits seeking the determination of the illegality of NTT's major restructuring policy have also been filed at four district courts in Tokyo, Shizuoka, Osaka, and Matsuyama. The Sapporo District Court made the first ruling.
- Akahata, September 30, 2006