Japan Press Weekly

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2009 January 14 - 20 [LABOR]

Temporary workers at Toyota-affiliated auto parts maker establish union to force employer to cancel dismissal

Temporary workers at a Toyota Motors-affiliated auto parts maker have established their own union to fight unreasonable dismissals. On January 18, they held a labor counseling session in Aichi Prefecture.

The staffing agency Taiyo Nieki (servicing) sends temporary workers to Futaba Sangyo, which supplies parts for luxury Toyota cars for export, including the Lexus model. These workers, however, live in wretched conditions in a dormitory.

Inamine Morinobu, 55, from Okinawa, is one of those temporary workers at Futaba Sangyo. He came to work at Futaba after he saw a help-wanted ad posted by Taiyo Nieki in Okinawa. The ad said that the salary is 350,000 yen a month. He began to work in May 2008 but was laid off at the year’s end.

Inamine put up a copy of the help-wanted ad he saw in Okinawa on the wall of the company dormitory cafeteria, saying, “We aren’t paid that much, are we?”

A Taiyo executive came in and shouted at him, “You are fired! Get out!”

His colleague Katsuren Masafumi was infuriated by a staffing agency executive ordering Inamine to get out. Katsuren remembered watching on TV JCP Chair Shii Kazuo’s questioning session in the Diet regarding temporary workers being thrown away by companies, and told Inamine to go to the Japanese Communist Party for consultation. He immediately called the JCP. A JCP district committee member came to them. After explaining to them that the dismissal order had no validity, he called the staffing agency and had the layoff order retracted.

The JCP district committee informed the staff at the All-Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers’ Union (JMIU) local office to help the temporary workers at Futaba Sangyo launch a union (JMIU branch).

On January 8, the union branch informed Taiyo Nieki of the establishment of the union, and asked the company to come sit with them at a negotiating table, demanding that dismissals be withdrawn and that working conditions be improved.

Another worker who joined the union said. “I have no complaint about work in itself. My only wish is to stay on the job. I did not know that temporary workers could join a union. We will work to improve the workplace for all the workers.”