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2011 November 9 - 15 TOP3 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

TEPCO’s tyrannical control promoted N-power generation

Overcome discrimination and oppression (Part 1)

A mid-1960s internal document of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) listed as labor control measures: exclude members of the Japanese Communist Party and of the Democratic Youth League of Japan from union executives in order to select and foster human resources obedient to the company; and categorize communist sympathizers into three levels in order to determine suitable countermeasures.

The document also sets out concrete steps to take such as: transfer a person, who could have negative impact on other personnel, to a different place; and give a zero-pay raise to communist-leaning workers, no matter how good their job performances may be.

TEPCO closely observed its employees who were JCP members or JCP supporters in this manner, originally for the purpose of suppressing their struggles against labor intensification and profit-first management. Promotion of nuclear power generation further accelerated such a tyrannical control.

Discrimination

After WWII, JCP members took part in a struggle waged by a power industrial union. In the 1950s, they were expelled from many workplaces as part of an anticommunist purge. Even after the industrial union was broken up into company unions, the struggle for a people-oriented electric power service and the improvement of electric power workers’ lives was on the rise.

Hara Nobuo (65) was one of these TEPCO workers who experienced discrimination. He faced not only wage discrimination and was also ostracized by peers. He remembered one occasion when he was the only person not invited to a drinking party held by the department which he belonged to. “It was a clear warning to others,” he said.

Arisaka Naoyuki (70) recalls that his application for company-provided housing was rejected, nobody ate snacks with him, and nobody ate sweets he brought to his workshop as a souvenir to share. He said, “All these tactics were part of the company’s conspiracy. Some were even forced to disavow their beliefs.”

Label as communist

Taniguchi Eiko was still in her 20s when she was working at TEPCO headquarters in 1969. One day, she was suddenly ordered to move to a branch office. “I was heading up a hobby group on my own initiative among female workers to write fairy stories, essays, and poems. The company considered my voluntary activity as communistic. In the branch office, I was labeled a communist.”

In 1974, Watanabe Reiko was suddenly summoned by her boss, “If you are not a JCP member, write down here that you have nothing to do with communists and submit it to the company.” As a dedicated Christian, Watanebe was collecting signatures calling for peace. That was why she was thought to be a JCP member.

Fearing that the company would control her beliefs, Watanabe filed a lawsuit followed by six other lawsuits filed by 142 JCP members and supporters in 1976. They fought in court for an end to TEPCO’s discrimination against them. In 1991, 29 other workers were added to the plaintiff group.

Behind the reckless promotion of nuclear power generation is the tyrannical control inside power companies or research institutes in order to restrain criticism by discriminating people who may be concerned about the danger of nuclear energy production.

(To be continued)