Japan Press Weekly

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2011 December 7 - 13 [LABOR]

Workers’ opposition puts brake on 3 party’s intent to relax proposed regulations on use of temps

The Democratic, the Liberal Democratic, and the Komei parties on December 8, the day before the final day of the current Diet session, gave up their attempt to enact a bill to revise the Worker Dispatch Law to relax initially-proposed regulations on the use of temporary workers.

On the previous day, the ruling DPJ and the opposition LDP and Komei in a House of Representatives Labor Committee meeting used their majority to pass the bill. However, this move met with strong opposition from the Japanese Communist, the Social Democratic, and the Your parties. The three major parties abandoned their attempt to gain Upper House approval and an enactment of the bill before the end of the present session. The three parties then decided to postpone deliberations until the next ordinary session of the Diet to be convened in January 2012.

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Sasaki Kensho on December 8 at the Lower House steering committee meeting pointed out that the bill had not been discussed for 19 months since the bill’s submission in April 2010. Despite this, the DPJ, the LDP, and Komei suddenly bulldozed the bill through the Lower House committee with only three hours for discussion after they agreed to make adverse amendments to the bill in November.

Sasaki criticized the three parties’ amendments as excluding bans on the use of on-call temporary workers and on sending temporary workers to manufacturers from the initial bill for revising the Worker Dispatch Law. He also said, “The government should scrap the bill with the three-party amendments and submit a new bill that protects temporary workers’ rights and working conditions.”

Temporary workers and trade unions on the same day held a sit-in action in front of the House of Representatives Dietmembers’ Office Building calling on the government to not enact the bill amended by the three parties.

Vice Secretary General of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) Inoue Hisashi said, “In order to prevent the government from enacting the three parties’ revised bill, we will make further efforts to increase people’s awareness of the need for a drastic revision of the Worker Dispatch Law.”