Japan Press Weekly

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2008 July 2 - 8 [LABOR]

Workers sue American Airlines demanding their dismissals be retracted

Four Japanese workers filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against American Airlines on July 1 claiming that the U.S. airline company illegally dismissed them when it outsourced their jobs.

At a news conference on the same day, 56-year-old plaintiff Ogura Itsuo said, “The company fired hard-working employees like they were throwing away disposal.”

The plaintiffs worked at the American Airlines reservation desk for 16-21 years.

On January 22, American Airlines notified them of the plan to outsource their jobs to an Australian company. They lost their jobs at the end of April.

Out of 17 workers at the reservations section, four were transferred to other offices, and seven agreed to voluntarily quit.

The remaining four workers joined the Sky Network, a general union for aviation workers affiliated with the Japan Federation of Aviation Workers’ Unions. The union demanded that their dismissals be retracted at the collective bargaining talks.

They claim that American Airlines had no justifiable reason to dismiss them because it has produced a major profit and that it failed to make efforts to avoid the dismissal when it planned to outsource the jobs a year ago.

Their lawyer criticized the dismissals as “brutal” because the company did not fulfill the requirements in the dismissal of workers that have been established through many labor-related court decisions.