Canon CEO accused of illegal use of temps says labor laws are to blame

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Canon CEO accused of illegal use of temps says labor laws are to blame

A top business leader is under fire for advocating a revision of labor legislation in order to legitimize his company's misconduct.

With Canon Inc.'s illegal use of disguised contract work being discussed in the Diet, Canon Chairman Mitarai Fujio, who also heads the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), is taking a "so-what" attitude and saying that related labor laws are to blame.

According to the minutes of the October 13 governmental Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy meeting released on October 18, Mitarai said, "The present labor laws governing contract work is unreasonable. I hope these laws will be revised again."

He also demanded a revision of the Worker Dispatch Law that requires companies to directly employ temporary workers as regular staff after a period of three years by saying, "If companies are instructed to strictly abide by the law, personnel costs in Japan will immediately lose their flexibility."

In the House of Councilors Budget Committee meeting on the same day, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi demanded that the government strengthen its directives to companies to make them comply with the law.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in reply to Ichida stated, "The government will appropriately and strictly address the problem."

The Canon Group accepts from a group of staffing agencies called Crystal a total of 3,033 temporary workers, the largest number among the companies that accept workers from Crystal. A core company of Crystal Group has recently been ordered to suspend its business operations by a Labor Bureau due to its use of disguised contract work.
- Akahata, October 20, 2006