Toyota stops evading law in its use of temporary workers after being exposed by JCP chair in Diet

Japan Press Weekly

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Toyota stops evading law in its use of temporary workers after being exposed by JCP chair in Diet

Toyota Auto Body has stopped using its tricky method of using temporary workers indefinitely after its evasion of the law was revealed by Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo at a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting on October 7.

Asked Akahata, the company’s public relations department said, “After Chair Shii’s questioning, the Aichi Prefectural Labor Department held a meeting on October 20 to explain to major local manufacturers how to interpret the Worker Dispatch Law. Then we acknowledged that our method was inappropriate in the light of the law and decided to end the indefinite use of temporary workers at all our factories.”

Toyota Auto Body says the present temporary workers will be directly employed on fixed-term contracts of two years and 11 months, the maximum length permitted by law.

The Worker Dispatch Law requires employers to offer a direct position to a temporary worker if they use him or her for more than three years. Toyota Auto Body used a trick to evade this legal requirement.

At the company’s factories, workers have been divided into two groups that do the same job on different shifts. In October, the company moved temporary workers in group A to group B leaving only full-time workers in group A. After three months and a day, temporary workers in group A would be ordered to move to group B so that the upper limit of the use of temporary workers not be applied.

A temporary worker in his 20s from Hokkaido Prefecture said he wants a stable full-time position instead of a job on a fixed-term contract.

Takagi Reiji, a 61-year-old full-time worker at the company’s Kariya factory, said that Shii’s Diet questioning has prevented the tricky method from being used by other companies throughout Japan. “We will continue to demand that the company directly hire temporary workers without fixed-term contracts. It can do so since it has accumulater a large amount of profits similar to Toyota Motors,” he said.

JCP Chair Shii stated on October 8 that it is a matter of course for Toyota Auto Body to recognize its practice as illegal and that it must fulfill its social responsibility to guarantee temporary workers stable jobs.

Shii also said, “We strongly demand that the company directly hire its temporary workers without a fixed-term contract. It was revealed that by trying to use temporary workers for more than three years, the company has violated the Worker Dispatch Law which prohibits employers from using temporary workers as substitutes for permanent employees.” - Akahata, November 9, 2008