Japan Press Weekly

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2009 January 7 - 13 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Increase in JCP membership draws media attention

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on an NHK interview program aired on January 11 commented on the background behind the recent increase in the JCP membership as well as the ongoing employment crisis.

The interviewer said he was surprised to hear that more than 1,000 people in December alone had joined the JCP, and that the membership increased by 14,000 between September 2007 and December 2008. He asked Shii, “Are many young people joining?”

“Yes, the percentage of young people in our membership has increased,” Shii said.

The interviewer then asked how this increase in the JCP membership occurred.

Shii said, “To use contingent workers as ‘disposable goods’ has become prevalent in large corporations since the 1999 adverse labor law reform to ease regulations.”

“Under these circumstances, the number of workers who cannot get out of poverty although they are working hard has exceeded 10 million. Our party is doing our utmost to figure out ways to ease their hardships in cooperation with them. Responding to such our political stance, many people have decided to join and struggle with us.”

The interviewer asked for Shii’s comment on the current employment crisis and political responsibility.

Shii said, “To have enabled large corporations to fire a large number of workers without hesitating was a serious political failure. In 1999, work by casual laborers was liberalized in principle, and in 2004, this was expanded to the manufacturing sector. As a result, when the economy is in good shape, large companies replace full-time regular workers with those who work under irregular or temporary labor contracts to increase profits, and when the economy is in recession, large corporations easily discard them as if they were just adjustment valves”.

Citing stable job security, improvement of social security services, assistance to small- and medium-sized businesses, and support for farming as specific measures that need to be implemented, Shii said that in order to rebuild the country’s economy it is necessary “to shift its emphasis from large corporations to people’s livelihoods by increasing domestic demand instead of depending on foreign demand.”

Shii added, “What the JCP can do, which the largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan cannot, is that we can boldly speak out against the greed of large corporations.”