Japan Press Weekly

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2013 January 23 - 29 TOP3 [LABOR]

Individual contractors can exercise labor rights: court

The Tokyo High Court on January 23 acknowledged that audio repairpersons under outsourcing contracts are regarded in the Trade Union Law as workers, and ordered the outsourcer to engage in collective bargaining with them.

They have an outsourcing agreement with Victor Service and Engineering, a subsidiary of the major audio maker JVC KENWOOD, former Victor Japan. Responding to a service call, they visit customers for after-sale service.

Based on a Supreme Court precedent, the court ruled that whether they can exercise workers’ rights or not should be judged from their way of working, not the type of their contracts, and decided that they are workers of the JVC KENWOOD subsidiary.

Overturning the lower court decision that had denied their rights as workers, the high court stated that Victor Service and Engineering’s refusal to sit down at the negotiating table with a workers’ union constitutes unfair labor practice.

In January 2005, they established a Victor After-Service branch of the All-Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers’ Union (JMIU) to demand better treatment.

The subsidiary, however, regarded them as self-employed independent contractors in order to deny the legitimacy of the union. The company has refused to hold collective bargaining sessions with them for eight years while maneuvering to force them to withdraw from the union and reduced their job assignments as an example to other repairpersons thinking of joining the union.

In a press conference after the court decision, branch leader of the union Yamaguchi Noriyuki said, “I demand that the company engage in labor-management talks as soon as possible.”