Japan Press Weekly

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2011 November 16 - 22 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

TEPCO, police, and PSIA together watch over employees

Overcome discrimination and oppression (Part 2)

Discrimination and suppression by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) against Japanese Communist Party members and supporters infiltrated even into their private lives, including wedding ceremonies.

Iida Yoshihiro, 71, was one of plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by ex-TEPCO employees in Gunma Prefecture against the utility’s ideological discrimination. In 1970, he sent invitations for his wedding to 21 colleagues. The company put pressure on those invited not to attend, and only five replied that they would attend the ceremony. Of the five, one person who had joined TEPCO the same year as Iida apologized on the day before the wedding to tell him that he could not attend.

To this day, Iida criticizes the company for meddling in friendship relations, and recalls that this colleague many times declined to sign a TEPCO document to be used in court proceedings finding faults with Iida.

Blacklist

The spying operations on employees were carried out by TEPCO jointly with the police and the Public Security Investigation Agency.

In a meeting of labor management executives at 9 electric power companies in 1966, a TEPCO official reported that the company listed JCP members based on close liaison relations with the PSIA and the police.

At a meeting held at a TEPCO branch in Gunma in 1968 to train managerial members, a Gunma Regional PSIA Bureau director gave a lecture on how to determine who were Democratic Youth League of Japan (DYLJ) members.

The practices of spying and discrimination were not limited to TEPCO employees but also covered local residents.

In the 1970s, TEPCO faced the need to raise electricity rates following the oil crisis and had difficulties in locating sites for constructing more nuclear reactors. In the name of promoting services for clients, the company started to offer them consultation and to take part in regional volunteer activities.

Contrary to the customer-friendly appearance, TEPCO tried to get information about residents’ moves opposing nuclear reactors or higher electricity rates. Individual names of such people were reported at in-house meetings. Information of customers obtained by branches and bill collectors were sent to the TEPCO head office.

Ex-policeman stationed at every N-reactor

Kanematsu Susumu, ex-TEPCO sales department employee and plaintiff in the Gunma lawsuit, testified that the company ousted opponents of nuclear reactors from TEPCO-sponsored study tours to nuclear power plants.

Since the late 1980s, TEPCO carried out bus tours to nuclear power plants in Fukushima and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa to promote the “safety myth” about N-plants. Members of neighborhood and women’s associations were invited, but residents opposing nuclear reactors were excluded under the pretext of budgetary limits.

Cozy relations still continue among TEPCO, PSIA and the police.

As of August 2011, 31 ex-policemen have executive positions at TEPCO. As of March 31, 2011, an ex-policeman was deployed at every TEPCO’s N-plant. TEPCO alleges that they give advice regarding public relations, security, and bill collection.

(To be continued)

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