Japan Press Weekly

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2011 November 16 - 22 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

TEPCO makes trade union its loyal partner

Overcome discrimination and oppression (Part 3)

How has the in-house trade union reacted to Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)’s despotic rule in the workplace and its reckless promotion of nuclear power generation?

TEPCO Trade Union (founded in 1951) was preceded by a spin-off union of Japan Electrical Power Workers’ Industrial Labor Union (Densan), the single organization representing electric utility workers in Japan.

Densan initially led the postwar workers’ movement by achieving a wage system based on living costs to cope with the inflated economy of the time.

After the anti-communist “Red Purge” (1950) and the division of the power industry into 9 power companies (1951), Densan was weakened.

In 1960, the TEPCO trade union changed its policy opposing the company’s stream-lining policy to one of cooperating with the company in promoting nuclear power generation and cutting costs.

Kikawada Kazutaka, the 4th TEPCO president, created the following slogans: “labor-management share the same destiny” and “business management must respect humanity”. However, these slogans actually meant corporate intervention into the trade union in order to foster a “good partner” of the company. The company intervened in electing trade union officials by vote maneuvering and excluding Japanese Communist Party members and other militant workers from elections.

In 1966, the trade union decided to support the former Japanese Democratic Socialist Party. Since then the union has continued to send its representatives who work for the interests of the power industry to the Diet by not only forcing its members to support JDSP candidates but also mobilizing members in elections campaigns.

Immediately after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, Nakamura Toshitsugu, House of Councilors member of the JDSP, who previously belonged to the TEPCO trade union, said, “This accident at Three Mile Island must not obstruct the development of nuclear energy in Japan, which is proper and safe.”

While forcing its members to support the JDSP, the TEPCO trade union suppressed the distribution of handbills by its members waging court struggles against the company’s ideological discrimination, as an “un-organizational act intervened in by a specific political party”.

Defend TEPCO at every nuclear accident

The TEPCO trade union spoke in TEPCO’s defense after every severe nuclear power plant accident that occurred anywhere in the world. After the Three Mile Island accident, it announced that the union is proud of its conviction that it would be impossible for such an accident to occur in the reactors in Japan.

After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, it proclaimed in its organ paper, “Let’s maintain confidence in nuclear power generation! Don’t be afraid of the opposition movement!”

In its action policy which the trade union upheld in its convention last May subsequent to the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, it declared no change in its position of supporting nuclear power generation and promoting it. No self-criticism for having promoted nuclear power generation is to be seen here.

(To be continued)