Japan Press Weekly

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2013 March 13 - 19 [LABOR]

Fixed-term university workers move step forward toward permanent employment

About 1,000 university workers, outside of teaching staff, with fixed-term contracts of one year, have won a major battle. From the coming FY, they will be able to demand that their contract term be converted to open-ended renewable terms after the university renews their contracts five times.

This became possible after the University of Tokushima (Tokushima Prefecture) in negotiation with its employees’ union announced that it will abolish the limit on renewal of fixed-term employees’ contracts in April.

The university workers’ union said, “It is an epoch-making outcome because many national universities plan to dismiss fixed-term contract workers whose contracts have been renewed five times due to the prior revision in the Labor Contract Law.”

The revised act states that workers with fixed-term contracts can request their employers to redesignate them at open-ended contract workers when they work for more than five years in total with a contract renewal.

Following the revision, the university management in December 2012 presented to the union its proposal to terminate contracts of fixed-term staff whose employment term reaches five years.

The union bargained with the management by presenting results of a survey conducted in February 2012 on the university’s full-time and fixed-term employees. The results showed that 90% of respondents demanded that the limit on contract renewals be abolished.

Related past article:
> Employers move to terminate employment contracts before labour law revised [February 22, 2013]