Japan Press Weekly

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2013 April 17 - 23 [LABOR]

Union condemns Ricoh for forcing employees to work overtime without pay

Union representatives on April 18 requested the Atsugi Labor Standards Inspection Office in Kanagawa Prefecture to instruct Ricoh, a major business machine manufacturer, to stop forcing their employees to work overtime without pay.

The Denki-Joho Union, a union for individual workers in electronics and information industries, told the office that workers at Ricoh Technology Center (Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture) are complaining about unpaid overtime work. The union already filed a complaint about the matter to the office in September last year.

Ricoh in 2011 announced a plan to reduce its workforce by 10,000 workers and stopped payment of overtime work for three months from January 2012 as a way to cut costs.

According to the union, workers stated, “I was told hours of overtime are not considered as hours worked,” and, “I feel desperate because my overtime work was counted as zero although I worked 50 hours of overtime.” Some workers believe that they risk being fired if they make a claim for overtime pay, the union added.

Nakamura Yukiko, chair of the Denki-Joho Union Kanagawa branch, in a meeting with the inspection office submitted a document from Ricoh workers which accuses the manufacturer of forcing them to work overtime without pay.

An official of the inspection office said that that they will carefully consider the document.

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>Workers beat back mass layoffs by major electronics firms [August 23 & 24, 2012]