100 temporary workers win direct employment at Mazda

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

100 temporary workers win direct employment at Mazda

Mazda Motor Corporation on July 1 announced that it will directly employ about 100 temporary workers at its main factory in Hiroshima Prefecture and its Hofu factory in Yamaguchi Prefecture under a six-month contract from July.

Mazda was instructed by a labor bureau to end its abuse of temporary workers. It is the first major automaker to offer temporary workers direct employment.

Workers' struggles in solidarity with the Japanese Communist Party pushed Mazda to make this decision.

However, temporary workers who have filed their demand for full-time positions with the Labor Bureau or in court were excluded from direct employment at this time. The Hiroshima Prefectural Federation of Trade Unions, affiliated with the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), announced that their struggle demanding full-time positions will continue.

Mazda has ignored the legally permitted duration for the use of temporary workers by hiring them as fixed-term contract workers for three months and a day ? a so-called 'cooling-off' period ? so that the company can work them as long as it wants without offering them full-time positions after three years.

Workers rose up to call for direct employment, and their struggles pushed the Hiroshima and the Yamaguchi labor bureaus to instruct Mazda to correct its labor practices in violation of the Worker Dispatch Law and the Employment Security Law.

Mazda said, "Taking the labor bureau's instruction into serious consideration, we have decided to directly employ temporary workers."

- Akahata, July 2, 2009