2009 December 2 - 8 [
POLITICS]
Postal stocks bill enacted
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December 4 & 5, 2009
A bill to freeze a sell-off of state-owned postal stocks was enacted on December 4 after passage through the House of Councilors plenary session with a majority vote from the Japanese Communist, Democratic, and Social Democratic parties.
The Komei Party voted against it and the Liberal Democratic Part abstained from the session.
The Japanese Communist Party from the outset has opposed the privatization of postal services, arguing that it will only help bring about another “patronage and corruption” scheme that impairs public services and preys on public assets.
The JCP once again emphasized the need to restore the government-run service of postal-savings and the obligation to provide universal service everywhere in Japan, bring the present four-company private structure back to the previous one-entity public structure, and focus on the promotion of common welfare as a key policy in postal operations.
Japan Post is the largest employer of temporary workers in Japan
On the previous day, JCP representative Yamashita Yoshiki at an Upper House Committee meeting demanded a drastic review of the postal system that gives priority to cost-cutting efforts.
Since the postal services were privatized in October 2007, Japan Post has also slashed the number of its regular employees by 6,000 and increased the number of non-regular employees by 15,000.
Yamashita said, “Japan Post now has become a private company using the largest number of non-regular employees in Japan,” and pointed out that these temporary employees “are being forced to assume the core mission of the postal services.”
While Internal Affairs and Communication Minister Haraguchi Kazuhiro said in reply, “They are an essential workforce for postal business operations,” Postal Reform Minister Kamei Shizuka said, “It is wrong to make them bear the essential tasks in postal services under the pretext of cutting costs.”
Yamashita also demanded that the government conduct a nationwide survey on non-regular employees in postal-related workplaces across Japan and improve their working conditions, citing an example in Hokkaido in which 70 percent of workers earn less than two million yen in wages a year.
Since the postal privatization, postal transport operations have been outsourced to private carriers. Revealing that many troubles have occurred one after another such as closure of the postal delivery department of private companies or their business bankruptcies, Yomashita stated, “The postal transport operation should not be assessed from a cost-cutting perspective.”
- Akahata, December 4 & 5, 2009
