Japan Press Weekly

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2013 October 16 - 22 [LABOR]

JCP proposes bill to regulate ‘black corporations’

The Japanese Communist Party in the House of Councilors on October 15 submitted to the Diet a bill to regulate so-called “black corporations” which use workers in an exploitative manner.

“Since we obtained the right to introduce bills to the Diet after our victory in the July Upper House election, this is the first step to carry out our campaign pledges,” JCP Chair Shii Kazuo said at a press conference held after the submission of the bill. This is the first bill the party submitted to the Diet on its own since 2004.

The JCP established a taskforce to draw up the bill to fulfill its election promise to work for measures to take against black corporations’ harsh working practices.

The three main components of the bill are regulations on excessively long working hours, promotion of information disclosure, and prevention of “power harassment” in workplaces.

The bill requires employers to record how many hours each of their employees work, and limits total hours of overtime to 360 hours a year.

Under the proposed bill, a company must disclose the number of workers it hired as well as the number of workers who left the company, and the government is obliged to establish a system to enable job seekers to know if a company they are applying for has violated labor laws in the past.

If the bill becomes law, the labor ministry will issue advice, instructions, or recommendations to companies where power harassment has been reported and will publicize the name of such companies if necessary.

The JCP chair at the press conference said, “If black corporations are left unregulated, it will lead to an overall worsening of working conditions in Japan with adverse impacts on other companies and their workers.”

Shii pointed out that the root cause of the increase in black corporations is an increase in non-regular employment and that the JCP will oppose the government move to further relax labor regulations. The party will work hard for both the enactment of the bill and the creation of more regular employment opportunities, he added.