Japan Press Weekly

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2014 October 8 - 14 [LABOR]

Women workers sue company for power harassment

Four women workers in Nagano Prefecture on October 6 filed a lawsuit with the Nagano District Court Matsumoto Branch, seeking compensation for being subjected to power harassment from their employer.

The four plaintiffs are workers at a sales subsidiary of Fukuda Denshi in Nagano’s Matsumoto City. Fukuda Denshi is a major manufacturer of medical devices such as electrocardiographs and AEDs, and is also well-known as one of the main sponsors for the professional baseball team Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

Shortly after taking up his position in April 2013, the sales company’s president assembled all workers and said, “Employees in their 50s are all ‘resistance forces’ hindering the company and they should be replaced with young people,” and “Desk jobs can be done even by part-timers or temporary workers.”

The company repeatedly called each woman worker to a room and for more than two hours pressed them to leave the firm because they are too “old” and their wages are too “high”. Some of the women developed hyperventilation due to considerable mental stress.

After that, those workers joined the All-Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers’ Union (JMIU) and urged the firm to hold collective bargaining with them over the issue of power harassment. The management has refused to respond to the union’s demand for over a year.

At a press conference after the filing, one of the complainants said, “After more than 30 years of working for this company, I cannot continue to bear such treatment in silence.” JMIU Nagano Prefectural Headquarters Chair Saikyo Shin’ichi said, “More and more workers are suffering from abusive labor practices at ‘black corporations’. We want to encourage them to fight back by winning this case.”