Japan Press Weekly

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2013 July 10 - 16 TOP3 [LABOR]

Eradicate ‘black companies’ from Japan

Akahata editorial (excerpt)

Japanese workers are standing up to “black companies” which throw away workers after pushing them to work beyond their emotional and physical limits. Listening to workers’ stories, Japanese Communist Party lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to the harsh labor practices at the major apparel company UNIQLO and the Japanese-style pub chain Watami. In addition to these companies, quite a few firms have been arbitrarily firing their employees.

How can black companies thrive in the country? This is because Japan’s labor laws fail to protect workers satisfactorily. A 26-year-old female worker at Watami, who killed herself only two months after she entered the company, is said to have worked overtime at night for more than 140 hours a month. The lack of a provision for limiting overtime work in the Labor Standards Law allows companies to outrageously exploit workers.

The JCP has played a major role in protecting workers from excessive exploitation such as working employees to death (“karoshi”) and having them work overtime without pay. It proposed in 1992 a bill to revise the Labor Standards Law, in which it tried to set a limit on overtime work, up to two hours a day, 20 hours a month, and 120 hours a year.

With the proposal, the JCP took up the issue at the Diet, working to increase public awareness of the issue together with civil movements. The Labor Ministry finally issued an official notice in 1998 and put a 360-hour yearly ceiling on overtime work. This shows that the pressure exerted by movements in and out of the House can change the current situation. It is important to launch a full-scale campaign to strengthen the notice to a legally binding one.

Forcing employees to work overtime without pay is a corporate crime. In the face of JCP parliamentarians raising the issue in the Diet over 300 times since 1976, the ministry issued another notification on April 6, 2001, obliging employers to limit excessive working hours. Since then labor standards inspection offices have tightened the control over corporations and the authorities have annually published the amount of money workers obtained in back pay from employers for their overtime work.

When the mass dismissals of contingent workers ensued after the Lehman shock in September 2008, JCP Chair Shii Kazuo directly negotiated with the leaders of the Japan Business Federation and Toyota Motor Corporation, demanding that they maintain their jobs.

The Abe government’s growth strategy is aiming to turn the whole country into a haven for black companies by relaxing the conditions for dismissals, further expanding the use of temporary workers, and legalizing unpaid overtime work. The JCP will work hard to thwart the administration’s moves and to establish rules for realizing humane working conditions.