June 20, 2013

Fired JAL workers on June 19 called on the carrier’s stockholders to urge the management to make safety the first priority while they were protesting on the street near the building where the stockholders’ meeting was taking place in Tokyo.

It was the first stockholders’ meeting Japan Airlines conducted since it was relisted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last year.

The fired workers are former Japan Airlines pilots and cabin attendants who are seeking retraction of their dismissals in court.

They were joined by fired mechanics who had worked at a JAL subsidiary which was forcibly dissolved by the carrier. They are also demanding in court that JAL as the parent company rehire them at other subsidiaries.

Yamaguchi Hiroya, who heads the pilots in the lawsuit, said, “No other carriers in the world would dismiss veteran pilots and cabin attendants just because they took sick leave.”