Japan Press Weekly

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2012 May 23 - 29 [LABOR]

Arbitrary wage cut violates Constitution: gov’t union members file suit

Members of a national government workers’ union on May 25 filed a suit for compensatory damages against the government, claiming that cutting their wages based on a “special law” violates the Constitution.

The plaintiff team consists of 241 members of the Japan Federation of National Public Service Employees’ Unions (Kokko-Roren). Kokko-Roren’s chair Miyagaki Tadashi at a press conference said, “We will never give in to a ‘wage-cut law’ that violates the fundamental human rights of national government workers.”

The “wage-cut” bill was introduced in a closed-door agreement among the Democratic, the Liberal Democratic, and Komei parties, and was forcibly passed in the Diet at the end of February. The special law reduced national government workers’ wages by 7.8% on average from April.

The Japanese Constitution guarantees the basic legal labor rights of all workers. In 1948 under the U.S. occupation, however, General Headquarters (GHQ) ordered the Japanese government to deprive government workers of their right to organize and bargain collectively. After that, government workers and their unions have been unable to enter into collective bargaining with the government regarding their wages and working conditions.

The National Personnel Authority was founded in 1948 as compensation for this loss of government workers’ rights. The Government Official Act provides that central government workers’ wages should be decided based on an annual recommendation by the NPA. The latest NPA recommendation advised the Cabinet and the Diet to reduce government workers’ salaries by 0.23% on average because of the national economy’s difficulties.

This is a clear violation of the Constitution by which some lawmakers created a new law in a backroom agreement and forced administrative workers to swallow the sharp wage-cuts amounting to as much as 7.8% though the workers have no measures to resist it.

A plaintiff from Aichi Prefecture said, “My monthly pay was cut by 32,000 yen. Such an unconstitutional action by the government is absolutely unacceptable.”