Japan Press Weekly

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2009 April 8 - 14 [LABOR]

Trend towards joining unions increases

More and more Japanese workers are joining unions to fight against unfair dismissals, including the termination of employment of temporary workers before the end of their contract terms. This shows that workers are rising up in struggles instead of suffering in silence.

All-Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers’ Union (JMIU) Chair Ikuma Shigemi commented on this trend in the April 4 issue of Akahata as follows:

At Koyo Sealing Techno Co., Ltd., a Tokushima-based maker of oil seals, temporary workers fought against the company’s illegal use of temporary workers “disguised as independent contractors”, demanding that the company directly employ them and offer full-time positions.

These workers, who have the skills and rich experience to train younger full-time employees in the company, used to be paid less than half of what full-time workers received. They said, “This way of using temporary workers is both irrational and unjustifiable.”

Media reported their struggle

At Isuzu Motors Limited, workers established their own union last December in protest against the arbitrary termination of their employment.

“At last, contingent workers are standing up for their rights,” media reports announced.

It was at that time that mainstream media paid attention to the struggle of “supervisors in name only” against unpaid overtime.

News about these struggles inspired many workers throughout the country and convinced them that it is possible to change the situation if they join unions and fight.

In fact, fixed-term contract workers at major auto manufacturers, including Isuzu, joined JMIU and succeeded in forcing the company to withdraw dismissal notices issued before the end of contract terms. Temporary workers, who were laid off by their staffing agencies before their contracts expired, overturned their dismissals and forced the company to offer monetary settlements, including payments of wages for the rest of the terms of contracts.

In the last several years, many contingent workers, including foreigners, have joined JMIU. Since last June, 1,500 workers have joined the JMIU. This industrial federation is trying to organize temporary and fixed-term contract workers before they are dismissed so that they can put up a struggle to maintain their jobs.

If the regional Labor Bureaus, at workers’ requests, expose illegal practices by employers regarding their use of temporary workers, it will give workers the power to achieve their demands.

However, the Labor Bureaus are reluctant to order companies to accept the temporary workers as direct employees even after recognizing that they are engaging in illegal labor practices. What is needed is to use the Labor Bureaus’ exposure of illegal labor practices as the lever to force employers to directly employ temporary workers.

Establishing rules of employment is urgent

The need now is to establish binding rules of employment. The Worker Dispatch Law must be fundamentally revised so that any illegal use of temporary workers in the guise of independent contractors will result in forcing the employer to directly hire them.

The Labor Standards Law should be revised to reduce the current legal maximum length of the use of fixed-term contract workers back to one year in principle and force employers to assign full-time workers to jobs that exist.

All JMIU members, both full-time and contingent workers, are united in waging the struggle that includes strikes demanding that an employer offer full-time positions to contingent workers. This move has played an important role in advancing the basic rights of contingent workers. In addition, JMIU itself has been strengthened by addressing the pressing issues facing contingent workers.

The manufacturing sector needs systems that support workers in improving and handing down their skills and in working in cooperation with each other. In order to establish such systems and produce quality goods, employees should be hired as full-time workers.