Japan Press Weekly

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2009 June 3 - 9 [LABOR]

Labor bureau instructs Mazda to end illegal use of temporary workers

The Hiroshima Labor Bureau instructed Mazda Motor Corporation to stop using temporary workers beyond the legally permitted maximum period of three years. The Yamaguchi Labor Bureau gave the Mazda Hofu plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture similar instructions.

In Japan, the Worker Dispatch Law requires companies to offer temporary workers direct employment after three years.

The labor authorities’ action was in response to a request from laid-off temporary workers at Mazda that they be employed directly by Mazda.

Mazda is the first automaker to receive a labor bureau instruction to stop violating the law regarding the maximum period permitted for the use of temporary workers.

In order to evade the law, Mazda used temporary workers by shifting their status between ‘support employees’ employed directly by the company and temporary workers from a staffing agency.

Mazda took advantage of the Labor Ministry’s guideline which states that if an employer uses temporary workers for more than three years by inserting a period of more than three months in which the company does not classify them as temporary workers, that period will not be counted as a part of the period of their use as temporary workers.

The bureau said it cannot confirm that there is no labor-management relationship between the staffing agency and ‘support employees’. It also acknowledged that Mazda violated the legal period permitted to use temporary workers saying that it is difficult to judge that Mazda properly used the cooling-off period of more than three months.

The labor bureau, however, concluded that Mazda had no obligation to offer those temporary workers direct employment because it had not been notified by the staffing agency of the term of sending temporary workers.

The Japanese Communist Party took up Mazda’s illegal labor practices in the Diet meetings in December 2008 and February 2009.